battery against the attacks of my fair insidious foe. I don't think," continued the colonel, casting a look of high glec, and soul-felt contentment, around his place of refuge, "she can get near us now, without a pair of wings tacked to her immensely-broad shoulders." "Ah! here she comes," pursued Georgiana, laughing. "Her eyes from heaven to earth in a fine frenzy rolling, as if she expected to see you in the clouds, on the carpet, or peradventure concealed under a table." "Well," languidly murmured the man of war, "I don't know but she will find me in the last-mentioned place some day or other; she bores me so, I would fain escape from listening to the index of all the perfections of the pretty Lydia, the accomplished Bella, and the witty Fanny; the beauty of one I think charmless, the talents of the other groundless, and the remarks of the third senseless; one is insipid, the other tiresome, and the last pert. I always long to say to lady Langham, that if she loves her daughters so much, I wonder she can endure the idea of parting with them; then her voice, is it not shrill as a bagpipe, and as monotonous too? for, would you believe it, she harps all on one string, to the tune of The Beautiful Maid? sides, I dislike trumpetting heralds; they always seem to announce a battle." Be Are you fearful then of an engagement?" exclaimed Miss Waldegrave, archly; and then smilingly added, "the throbs of your heart told a different tale at Waterloo.". Colonel Montrath had distinguished himself much on the memorable eighteenth of June, and was pleased with the allusion to it. "And what a fright," resumed he, "she is, that lady Langham! did you ever observe her hands ?" • She " She has a leathern hand, A freestone-coloured hand; I verily did think And, colonel Montrath, did not you see "Oh! yes, that was to make Ashbourne, Wentworth, Beauchief, and that new-fangled ape, Mr. St. Julians, admire how exquisitely white and taper were her fingers, and how graceful the attitude in which she leant over the chaise longue." "Oh, Miss Waldegrave," said Mr. Melford, carelessly disengaging himself from lady Hautville," I have just heard such such a capital story of my friend Dunford, I must tell it to you." Colonel Montrath, who was well aware that this gentleman was one continually talking without saying any thing, and "marred a good tale by telling it," walked silently away, and allowed himself to be persuaded into playing a game of bagatelle with Miss Harvey, while his seat was instantaneously seized by the gossiping Mr. Melford, who was charmed to find a listener in Georgiana; and without reflecting that his friend or acquaintance might be wholly a stranger to her, he thus began "I suppose you know what a disciple of Epicurus, what a lover of good living, what an ami du bon cher, Dunford is; he lives in the highest style, keeps the best table of any man in London, gives his cook upwards of two hundred a-year, and in short has an establishment très bien montée; well, one morning a very intimate friend of mine called upon him, and after gravely listening to his complaints of when he gave a dinner, he never could get a part of the side of a turbot placed next the dish (which by epicures is reckoned the only eatable part), as of course he was obliged to give those most delicate morsels to his guests, he, in order to console my friend—” "Which friend, pray ?" said lord Frederic Beauchief abruptly. "Mr. Dunford's acquaintance," pursued the discomfited Melford, "said that this misery of being doomed to swallow the remainder of the fish, after the delicious part was eaten, could be easily obviated by having two turbots put on the table. The plan enchanted the epicure, who immediately summoned Monsieur Hachis, his cook, and told him, earnestly, to send up two fish instead of one he had ordered for that day's regale (he was to give a grand party). He, |