can look around me and see as I do"-(she waves her fan round, and
points to the illustrations scintillating round the room)--"and see as
I do now--a Poski, whose name is ever connected with Polish history--an
Ettore, who has exchanged a tonsure and a rack for our own free
country--a Hammerstein, and a Quartz, a Miss Rudge, our Transatlantic
sister (who I trust will not mention this modest salon in her
forthcoming work on Europe), and Miss Pinnifer, whose genius I
acknowledge, though I deplore her opinions; if I can gather together
travellers, poets, and painters, princes and distinguished soldiers from
the East, and clergymen remarkable for their eloquence, my humble aim is
attained, and Maria Newcome is not altogether useless in her generation.
Will you take a little refreshment? Allow your sister to go down to
the dining-room supported by your gallant arm." She looked round to the
admiring congregation, whereof Honeyman, as it were acted as clerk, and
flirting her fan, and flinging up her little head. Consummate Virtue
walked down on the arm of the Colonel.

The refreshment was rather meagre. The foreign artists generally dashed
downstairs, and absorbed all the ices, creams, etc. To those coming late
there were chicken-bones, table-cloths puddled with melted ice, glasses
hazy with sherry, and broken bits of bread. The Colonel said he never
supped; and he and Honeyman walked away together, the former to bed, the
latter, I am sorry to say, to his club; for he was a dainty feeder, and
loved lobster, and talk late at night, and a comfortable little glass of
something wherewith to conclude the day.

He agreed to come to breakfast with the Colonel, who named eight or nine
for the meal. Nine Mr. Honeyman agreed to with a sigh. The incumbent
of Lady Whittlesea's chapel seldom rose before eleven. For, to tell the
truth, no French abbot of Louis XV. was more lazy and luxurious, and
effeminate, than our polite bachelor preacher.

One of Colonel Newcome's fellow-passengers from India was Mr. James
Binnie of the Civil Service, a jolly young bachelor of two- or
three-and-forty, who, having spent half of his past life in Bengal, was
bent upon enjoying the remainder in Britain or in Europe, if a residence
at home should prove agreeable to him. The Nabob of books and tradition
is a personage no longer to be found among us. He is neither as wealthy
nor as wicked as the jaundiced monster of romances and comedies, who
purchases the est