y, but he had fixed in his heart of hearts upon that
occasion, (when surrounded by all his splendor, and assisted by the
seductive arts of Terpsichore and Bacchus,) to whisper to Mrs.
M'Catchley those soft words which--but why not here let Mr. Richard
Avenel use his own idiomatic and unsophisticated expression? "Please the
pigs, then," said Mr. Avenel to himself, "I shall pop the question."

CHAPTER XVII.

The Great Day arrived at last; and Mr. Richard Avenel, from his
dressing-room window, looked on the scene below as Hannibal or Napoleon
looked from the Alps on Italy. It was a scene to gratify the thought of
conquest, and reward the labors of ambition. Placed on a little eminence
stood the singers from the mountains of the Tyrol, their high-crowned
hats and filagree buttons and gay sashes gleaming in the sun. Just seen
from his place of watch, though concealed from the casual eye, the
Hungarian musicians lay in ambush amidst a little belt of laurels and
American shrubs. Far to the right lay what had once been called
(_horresco referens_) the duckpond, where--_Dulce sonant tenui gutture
carmen aves_. But the ruthless ingenuity of the head artificer had
converted the duckpond into a Swiss lake, despite grievous wrong and
sorrow to the _assuetum innocuumque genus_--the familiar and harmless
habitants, who had been all expatriated and banished from their native
waves. Large poles twisted with fir branches, stuck thickly around the
lake, gave to the waters the becoming Helvetian gloom. And here, beside
three cows all bedecked with ribbons, stood the Swiss maidens destined
to startle the shades with the _Ranz des Vaches_. To the left, full upon
the sward, which it almost entirely covered, stretched the great Gothic
marquee, divided into two grand sections--one for the _dancing_, one for
the _dejeune_.

The day was propitious--not a cloud in the sky. The musicians were
already tuning their instruments; figures of waiters--hired of
Gunter--trim and decorous, in black trowsers and white waistcoats,
passed to and fro the space between the house and the marquee. Richard
looked and looked; and as he looked he drew mechanically his razor
across the strop; and when he had looked his fill, he turned reluctantly
to the glass and shaved! All that blessed morning he had been too busy,
till then, to think of shaving.

There is a vast deal of character in the way that a man performs that
operation of shaving! You should have seen R