him some beer?"--Warrington asked,
remarking with a pleased surprise the splendid toilet of this scented
and shiny-booted young aristocrat; but Foker had not the slightest wish
for beer or tobacco: he had very important business: he rushed away
to the Pall Mall Gazette office, still bent upon finding Pen. Pen had
quitted that pace. Foker wanted him that they might go together to call
upon Lady Clavering. Foker went away disconsolate, and whiled away an
hour or two vaguely at clubs: and when it was time to pay a visit, he
thought it would be but decent and polite to drive to Grosvenor Place
and leave a card upon Lady Clavering. He had not the courage to ask to
see her when the door was opened, he only delivered two cards, with Mr.
Henry Foker engraved upon them, to Jeames, in a speechless agony. Jeames
received the tickets bowing his powdered head. The varnished doors
closed upon him. The beloved object was as far as ever from him,
though so near. He thought he heard the tones of a piano and of a
syren singing, coming from the drawing-room and sweeping over the
balcony-shrubbery of geraniums. He would have liked to stop and listen,
but it might not be. "Drive to Tattersall's," he said to the groom, in
a voice smothered with emotion,--"And bring my pony round," he added, as
the man drove rapidly away.

As good luck would have it, that splendid barouche of Lady Clavering's,
which has been inadequately described in a former chapter, drove up to
her ladyship's door just as Foker mounted the pony which was in waiting
for him. He bestrode the fiery animal, and dodged about the arch of
the Green Park, keeping the carriage well in view, until he saw Lady
Clavering enter, and with her--whose could be that angel form, but the
enchantress's, clad in a sort of gossamer, with a pink bonnet and a
light-blue parasol,--but Miss Amory?

The carriage took its fair owners to Madame Rigodon's cap and lace shop,
to Mrs Wolsey's Berlin worsted shop,--who knows to what other resorts
of female commerce? Then it went and took ices at Hunter's, for Lady
Clavering was somewhat florid in her tastes and amusements, and not only
liked to go abroad in the most showy carriage in London, but that the
public should see her in it too. And so, in a white bonnet with a yellow
feather, she ate a large pink ice in the sunshine before Hunter's door,
till Foker on his pony, and the red jacket who accompanied him, were
almost tired of dodging.

Then at last