open air: "I detect it in your manner; what is it?"

"I know not. But you have told me no news; these streets are grown
strange to me. Who live now in yonder houses? once the dwellers were my
friends."

"In that house,--oh, new people! I forget their names,--but rich; in a
year or two, with luck, they may be exclusives, and forget my name. In
the other house, Carr Vipont still."

"Vipont; those dear Viponts! what of them all? Crawl they, sting they,
bask they in the sun, or are they in anxious process of a change of
skin?"

"Hush! my dear friend: no satire on your own connections; nothing so
injudicious. I am a Vipont, too, and all for the family maxim, 'Vipont
with Vipont, and come what may!'"

"I stand rebuked. But I am no Vipont. I married, it is true, into their
house, and they married, ages ago, into mine; but no drop in the blood
of time-servers flows through the veins of the last childless Darrell.
Pardon. I allow the merit of the Vipont race; no family more excites my
respectful interest. What of their births, deaths, and marriages?"

COLONEL MORLEY.--"As to the births, Carr has just welcomed the birth of
a grandson; the first-born of his eldest son (who married last year a
daughter of the Duke of Halifax),--a promising young man, a Lord in the
Admiralty. Carr has a second son in the Hussars; has just purchased his
step: the other boys are still at school. He has three daughters too,
fine girls, admirably brought up; indeed, now I think of it, the eldest,
Honoria, might suit you, highly accomplished; well read; interests
herself in politics; a great admirer of intellect; of a very serious
turn of mind too."

DARRELL.--"A female politician with a serious turn of mind,--a farthing
rushlight in a London fog! Hasten on to subjects less gloomy. Whose
funeral achievement is that yonder?"

COLONEL MORLEY.--"The late Lord Niton's, father to Lady Montfort."

DARRELL.--"Lady Montfort! Her father was a Lyndsay, and died before the
Flood. A deluge, at least, has gone over me and my world since I looked
on the face of his widow."

COLONEL MORLEY.--"I speak of the present Lord Montfort's wife,--the
Earl's. You of the poor Marquess's, the last Marquess; the marquisate
is extinct. Surely, whatever your wanderings, you must have heard of the
death of the last Marquess of Montfort?"

"Yes, I heard of that," answered Darrell, in a somewhat husky and
muttered voice. "So he is dead, the young man! What killed him?"