happy with his chief in passing the troops of animated ladies under review.  He named as many as were known to him.  Reviewing women exquisitely attired for inspection, all variously and charmingly smiling, is a relief after the monotonous regiments of men.  Ireland had done her best to present the hero of her blood an agreeable change; and he too expressed a patriotic satisfaction on hearing that the faces most admired by him were of the native isle.  He looked upon one that came whirling up to him on a young officer’s arm and swept off into the crowd of tops, for a considerable while before he put his customary question.  She was returning on the spin when he said,

‘Who is she?’

Sir Lukin did not know.  ’She ’s a new bird; she nodded to my wife; I’ll ask.’

He manoeuvred a few steps cleverly to where his wife reposed.  The information he gathered for the behoof of his chief was, that the handsome creature answered to the name of Miss Merion; Irish; aged somewhere between eighteen and nineteen; a dear friend of his wife’s, and he ought to have remembered her; but she was a child when he saw her last.

‘Dan Merion died, I remember, about the day of my sailing for India,’ said the General.  ‘She may be his daughter.’

The bright cynosure rounded up to him in the web of the waltz, with her dark eyes for Lady Dunstane, and vanished again among the twisting columns.

He made his way, handsomely bumped by an apologetic pair, to Lady Dunstane, beside whom a seat was vacated for him; and he trusted she had not over-fatigued herself.

‘Confess,’ she replied, ’you are perishing to know more than Lukin has been able to tell you.  Let me hear that you admire her:  it pleases me; and you shall hear what will please you as much, I promise you, General.’

‘I do.  Who wouldn’t?’ said he frankly.

’She crossed the Channel expressly to dance here tonight at the public Ball in honour of you.’

’Where she appears, the first person falls to second rank, and accepts it humbly.’

‘That is grandly spoken.’

‘She makes everything in the room dust round a blazing jewel.’

’She makes a poet of a soldier.  Well, that you may understand how pleased I am, she is my dearest friend, though she is younger than I, as may be seen; she is the only friend I have.  I nursed her when she was an infant; my father and Mr. Dan Merion were chums.  We were parted by my marriage and the voyage to India.  We have not yet exchanged a syllable:  she was snapped up, of course, the moment she entered the room.  I knew she would be a taking girl:  how lovely, I did not guess.  You are right, she extinguishes the others.  She used to be the sprightliest of living creatures, and to judge by her letters, that has not faded.  She ’s in the market, General.’

Lord Larrian nodded to everything he heard, concluding with a mock doleful shake of the head.  ‘My poorest subaltern!’ he sighed, in the theatrical but cordially melancholy style of green age viewing Cytherea’s market.