y Innishowan is your aunt?"

"Of course she is my aunt."

"Will you be so very good as to get a card for her party on Tuesday, for
my cousin, Mr. Clive Newcome? Clive, please be introduced to the Marquis
of Farintosh."

The young Marquis perfectly well recollected those mustachios and their
wearer on a former night, though he had not thought fit to make any sign
of recognition. "Anything you wish, Miss Newcome," he said; "delighted,
I'm sure;" and turning to Clive--In the army, I suppose?"

"I am an artist," says Clive, turning very red.

"Oh, really, I didn't know!" cries the nobleman; and my lord bursting
out laughing presently as he was engaged in conversation with Miss Ethel
on the balcony, Clive thought, very likely with justice, "He is making
fun of my mustachios. Confound him! I should like to pitch him over into
the street." But this was only a kind wish on Mr. Newcome's part; not
followed out by any immediate fulfilment.

As the Marquis of Farintosh seemed inclined to prolong his visit, and
his company was exceedingly disagreeable to Clive, the latter took his
departure for an afternoon walk, consoled to think that he should
have Ethel to himself at the evening's dinner, when Lady Anne would be
occupied about Sir Brian, and would be sure to be putting the children
to bed, and, in a word, would give him a quarter of an hour of
delightful tete-a-tete with the beautiful Ethel.

Clive's disgust was considerable when he came to dinner at length,
and found Lord Farintosh, likewise invited, and sprawling in the
drawing-room. His hopes of a tete-a-tete were over. Ethel and Lady Anne
and my lord talked, as all people will, about their mutual acquaintance:
what parties were coming off, who was going to marry whom, and so forth.
And as the persons about whom they conversed were in their own station
of life, and belonged to the fashionable world, of which Clive had but
a slight knowledge, he chose to fancy that his cousin was giving herself
airs, and to feel sulky and uneasy during their dialogue.

Miss Newcome had faults of her own, and was worldly enough as perhaps
the reader has begun to perceive; but in this instance no harm, sure,
was to be attributed to her. If two gossips in Aunt Honeyman's parlour
had talked over the affairs of Mr. Jones and Mr. Brown, Clive would not
have been angry; but a young man of spirit not unfrequently mistakes
his vanity for independence: and it is certain that nothing is more
off