proved, with all my heart. I am sure there was room for it. Gentlemen,
shall we go up to the ladies and have some coffee?" And herewith the
colloquy ended, and the party ascended to the drawing-room.

The party ascended to the drawing-room, where no doubt both the ladies
were pleased by the invasion which ended their talk. My wife and the
Colonel talked apart, and I saw the latter looking gloomy, and the
former pleading very eagerly, and using a great deal of action, as the
little hands are wont to do, when the mistress's heart is very much
moved. I was sure she was pleading Ethel's cause with her uncle.

So indeed she was. And Mr. George, too, knew what her thoughts were.
"Look at her!" he said to me. "Don't you see what she is doing? She
believes in that girl whom you all said Clive took a fancy to before he
married his present little placid wife; a nice little simple creature,
who is worth a dozen Ethels."

"Simple certainly," says Mr. P., with a shrug of the shoulders.

"A simpleton of twenty is better than a roue of twenty. It is better
not to have thought at all, than to have thought such things as must go
through a girl's mind whose life is passed in jilting and being jilted;
whose eyes, as soon as they are opened, are turned to the main chance,
and are taught to leer at earl, to languish at a marquis, and to grow
blind before a commoner. I don't know much about fashionable life.
Heaven help us (you young Brummell! I see the reproach in your face!)
Why, sir, it absolutely appears to me as if this little hop-o'-my-thumb
of a creature has begun to give herself airs since her marriage and her
carriage. Do you know, I rather thought she patronised me? Are all women
spoiled by their contact with the world, and their bloom rubbed off in
the market? I know one who seems to me to remain pure! to be sure, I
only know her, and this little person, and Mrs. Flanagan our laundress,
and my sisters at home, who don't count. But that Miss Newcome to whom
once you introduced me? Oh, the cockatrice! only that poison don't
affect your wife, the other would kill her. I hope the Colonel will not
believe a word which Laura says." And my wife's tete-a-tete with our
host coming to an end about this time, Mr. Warrington in high spirits
goes up to the ladies, recapitulates the news of Barnes's lecture,
recites "How doth the little busy bee," and gives a quasi-satirical
comment upon that well-known poem, which bewilders Mrs. Clive, until