y from all the trouble and chatter of the salons, the gossip of the
embassies, the fluttering ceremonial of the Parisian ladies' visits
in their fine toilettes, the fadaises of the dancing dandies, and the
pompous mysteries of the old statesmen who frequented her grandmother's
apartment. The world began for her at night; when she went in the train
of the old Countess from hotel to hotel, and danced waltz after waltz
with Prussian and Neapolitan secretaries, with princes' officers of
ordonnance,--with personages even more lofty very likely,--for the court
of the Citizen King was then in its splendour; and there must surely
have been a number of nimble young royal highnesses who would like to
dance with such a beauty as Miss Newcome. The Marquis of Farintosh had
a share in these polite amusements. His English conversation was not
brilliant as yet, although his French was eccentric; but at the court
balls, whether he appeared in his uniform of the Scotch Archers, or in
his native Glenlivat tartar there certainly was not in his own or the
public estimation a handsomer young nobleman in Paris that season. It
has been said that he was greatly improved in dancing; and, for a young
man of his age, his whiskers were really extraordinarily large and
curly.

Miss Newcome, out of consideration for her grandmother's strange
antipathy to him, did not inform Lady Kew that a young gentleman by the
name of Clive occasionally came to visit the Hotel de Florac. At first,
with her French education, Madame de Florac never would have thought of
allowing the cousins to meet in her house; but with the English it was
different. Paul assured her that in the English chateaux, les meess
walked for entire hours with the young men, made parties of the fish,
mounted to horse with them, the whole with the permission of the
mothers. "When I was at Newcome, Miss Ethel rode with me several times,"
Paul said; "a preuve that we went to visit an old relation of the
family, who adores Clive and his father." When Madame de Florac
questioned her son about the young Marquis to whom it was said Ethel
was engaged, Florac flouted the idea. "Engaged! This young Marquis is
engaged to the Theatre des Varietes, my mother. He laughs at the notion
of an engagement." When one charged him with it of late at the club; and
asked how Mademoiselle Louqsor--she is so tall, that they call her the
Louqsor--she is an Odalisque Obelisque, ma mere; when one asked how the
Louqsor wo