‘I wish to have a little serious conversation with you, Lady Torrendale,’ said his Lordship one morning, as he entered her dressing-room at an unusually early hour. ‘That friendship you have formed with –’

‘Matilda,’ interrupted the Countess eagerly – ‘Well, have I not won the wager I laid last year?’ /

‘That you would be as fond of Miss Melbourne as you were then, that day twelve-month? No, Lady Torrendale; you are very far from having won the wager: it took place towards the latter end of October; – July, August, September, October – it still wants three months, three weeks, and two days, of the given time. – It was not of that I was going to speak, but of Mrs. Stockwell; that Scythian becomes every day more insupportable.’

‘Is Scythian, my Lord, the best name you have for her? If you will have it my poor friend is a barbarian, it is certainly better than Parthian; for then, you know, she would wound you as she fled.’

‘So she fled, I should little care whether she wounded me or not. Your attachment to Miss Melbourne at least can do you no discredit. She is a dignified young woman, a young woman such as now is seldom met with. How much is it to be regretted that many more do not resemble her. But for the other –’

‘Well, enough of Matilda,’ exclaimed her Ladyship. ‘What is the good of recapitulating her merits, now we must lose her? For lose her we must, whether they send for her to town, or return to the country.’