his conduct has been quite lover-like;" here the ancient dissembler threw back her head, paddled her hands, and creaked out one of her Vulpine smiles, which always had an unnatural appearance; for her muscles, albeit unused to the merry mood, seemed rusty and obdurate in the extreme; "and the only thing, my dear madam,” continued she, "that at all consoled him, was your having had the prudence to send for a physician. I hope, I am sure, that he's been of service, and that you are not in much pain now."

"Thank you," said Julia, in a low and languid voice, "I am easier now."

"It was vaustly provoking, my dear madam," resumed the dowager, with still more empressement and hypocrisy than before, "and we all regretted extremely. De Clifford was quite dull the whole evening, I assure you that you should have been prevented coming to the ball by this here sad accident."

Fanny, who had been fidgeting about in her chair during the whole of this speech, could keep silent no longer, but said in a clear, distinct, and haughty

tone

"Your ladyship appears to be under some strange mistake about my sister's hand; for she was not hurt by any accident, but by a blow from Lord de Clifford."

Here ensued another rusty smile, another toss back of the head, and more paddling of the hands on the part of the dowager, as she said, turning to Julia

"You see, my dear madam, gentlemen are so rough in their bodinawge,* that they are apt sometimes to do mischief when they least intend it; but," continued she, looking mothers-in-law at Fanny, raising her voice and speaking with increased volubility, as though determined she would not be interrupted,

the worst thing you can do is to let your hand hang down; for I remember once, when my mother hurt her hand, she was ordered not to take it out of a sling for a month. I'll relate you the circumstance :-my mother was a vaustly sperited woman, and you must know, Lady de Clifford, it was the fashion in those days for ladies to drive themselves; and one evening she was driving in her phaeton rather late, on her return to Blichingly, across Hounslow Heath, when she was overtaken * In plain French, badinage.

by a highwayman on a very sperited horse, in a black mask. Now my mother being, as I before mentioned, one of the most sperited women of her day, never travelled without her pistols-so immediately drawing one, she shot the robber dead, which caused him to fall back in his saddle, and relinquish his grasp of her left hand, which he had tightly seized. Seeing that he was incapable of further resistance, with that wonderful presence of mind which never forsook her, she gave the reins to the groom, and getting out of the carriage, proceeded to search the robber's pockets, in which she found two heavily laden purses, three watches, the miniature of a lady set with brilliants, and a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles, a boot hook, a corkscrew, and a toothpick case, all of which she sent to Bow-street the next day, except the corkscrew, which I have now at Blichingly. After this she drove off as fast as possible, and never even mentioned the circumstance till the next morning at breakfast, when, on looking over the noospapers, I saw a paragraph headed, 'Wonderful courage of a lady;' and after I had read out the account I have just given you, my mother, (who was breaking a rusk in her chocolate with her right hand, her left being in a sling from the wrench the robber had given it,) said, in as cool a voice as if she had been asking for a cup of tea, 'My dear, that was me. I did not think the circumstance worth mentioning last night.' Oh, she was a wonderful woman, my dear madam, so vaustly sperited!"

"Wonderful indeed!" said Fanny, her face buried in her handkerchief, almost convulsed with laughter. Luckily, at this crisis Berryl entered with some books and a parcel, which she gave to the dowager, who, opening the latter, drew from it a very dingy beetroot-coloured ten-shilling China crape shawl, which she presented to Lady de Clifford, saying

"My dear madam, here is a rale Ingeef shawl I met with the other day, and as you have such vaustly good taste in dress, I thought it would be the very thing for you."

After which, with that generosity of spirit which the truly noble-minded always feel, to silence Julia's

It is to be presumed that it was the man, and not the horse that wore the mask as above stated.-Printer's Devil.

1 Anglice, Indian.

thanks, she began heaping fresh benefits upon her by adding

"And here, my dear madam, are some books, which I thought might amuse you, for the novels some years back were much more amusing, and better written, than those of the present day. Let me see, here is a vaustly interesting one-' The Innocent Adulteress, and the Humane Assassin; The Handsome Major; or, who the D-I can he be? by a young lady of Fashion;' 'The Fortunate Village Maid; or, Memoirs of the Marchioness of L. V.; 'Read and find out what it Means;' 'She's off with the Footman; or, Who'd have thought it ?-and here, my dear madam, is a vaustly curious old book, in another style, not exactly a novel," and her ladyship raised her glass, and read out the following tempting bill of fare:-The Law and Lawyers laid Open; in Twelve Visions, setting forth the Grievances of the Law, and the Remedies proposed; A Description of a Court of Justice; The Trial of Peter Puzzle; Cause Post-poned, and why; A Lawyer and a Catchpole; Identical Trial of Peter Puzzle; Cause resumed; His Crimes and Sentence; A comical Trial of a Piece of a Lawyer, and a Patch of an Author; Tim, the Cozener-his Trial and Abuse of Foreigners, to the Scandal of his Country; On Britannia's Complaint -receives Sentence as the defamed of his Country; The Despairing Judge; Opinion of the Bench on his Case; The Skip turned Bencher; Three Brethren very Fat; North contends for the Chancellorship, which Ends in a Fray; An honest Attorney permitted to speak for himself, is advanced near the Bench; Modesty having a Cause desires to choose her Counsel, and has leave-she rejects a Multitude, and at last pitches on Faz and Young K- -by; the Grand Question debated, whether an honest Counsel ought to plead a dishonest Cause; Cicero's Speech thereon, and the Result; Jack Ketch's Petition to the Sheriffs; Characters of Sworn Appraisers, and their villanous Usage of unfortunate Tradesmen; The Lawyers being ordered into Cells apart against a new Day of Trial, all the Cells are visited, their Persons described, and their several Employ; to which is added, Plain Truth, in three Dialogues, between Trueman, Skinall, Dryboots, three Attorneys, and

Season, a Bencher'-Oh! it's exceedingly clever, and vaustly amusing, I assure you!"

"So I should think," said Julia and Fanny, in the same breath, and again obliged to have recourse to their pocket-handkerchiefs. Delightful and intellectual as the conversation had been, it was beginning to flag, when the door leading into the drawing-room opened, and Lord de Clifford advanced, and after having announced to his mother that breakfast was ready, folded his arms, and turned to his wife, though scarcely looking at her, said, in an exhilarating tone of voice, 'Well, my dear Julia, I hope you are better. Have you had your breakfast yet, or shall I send you in some?'

"O dear," said the dowager, rising, "it is time you and I, Miss Neville, should go, for I hate to interrupt matrimonial tête-à-têtes, I think it is so delightful to see them."

"Cela depend," replied Fanny; "there may be a magic about them sometimes certainly; but when it degenerates into legerdemain, I cannot say I admire them," added she, looking indignantly at her brotherin-law.

“ Why, d-n it," said he, taking out his watch," "it's half-past one, we'd better all go to breakfast, if we mean to have any to-day."

Lady de Clifford entreated them to do so, and was not sorry for the relief of being left to herself. Upon entering the breakfast-room, they found Saville on the sofa, reading the last Galignani-Mr. Herbert Grimstone standing with his back to the fireless grate, looking at his painfully tight boots more in sorrow than in anger-Mrs. Seymour was working a pair of slippers in one window, while Monsieur de Rivoli was in another, doing a caricature of Lord Charles Dinely, whom Herbert had invited to breakfast, and who was amusing himself by alternately entangling Mrs. Seymour's silks, and shying paper pellets into the gondolas as they passed under the window. Major Nonplus sat alone at a side-table, with a napkin tucked under his chin, and a dish as large as a boat before him of raw oysters, which he was devouring audibly. Reposing for one moment from his labours just as Fanny, Lord de Clifford, and the dowager entered, he exclaimed, with an ungratefully reproach

ful look at the Xenophon's trophy of empty shells before him

"Ah," as old Earle the miser used to say," what capital things oysters would be, if one could but feed one's servants on the shells!"

"Very just observation," responded the dowager. "Alas! nulla est sincera voluptas, Major?" sympathized Saville.

"Which means," replied the latter, again returning to the charge, "nó oyster without a shell, I suppose. After all, they are not so bad neither, for without them we'd have none of the sea water."

"Ah oui et apparament vous avez la mer à boir la," cried Monsieur de Rivoli, looking over from his sketch at the innumerable instalments of the Adriatic that the Major was swallowing.

"Pray," said Herbert to his own servant, as he brought in his diurnal mess of prepared cocoa, and one of his homeopathic powders, "is Monsieur Barbouiller, the French gentleman, up yet ?”

"He's been gone these two hours, sir," replied the

man.

"Gone! and did he leave no message for me ?" "No, sir, only a book, which he said I was to give you."

"O, that is all right," said Herbert, brightening up; and five minutes after, his beloved Timbuctoo was presented to him. He nearly pushed Mrs. Seymour's plate into her lap in his eagerness to search within the ponderous volume for some note or other definitive opinion of the departed critic. But, alas! none greeted him-save at the end of the volume, one small quotation from Martial

"Comitetur punica librum

Spongia,

Non possunt multae una litura potest."

"Stupid ass," exclaimed he, closing the book, and banishing it to the back of his chair, as he resumed his attentions to a piece of dry toast.

"What's the matter, my dear?" inquired his tender mother.

"O nothing, my dear mamma, only French people are either the cleverest or the silliest people in the world."

"I say, old fellow," cried Lord Charles Dinely from the other end of the table, enforcing the appeal by