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Whereupon in the agony of those weeks in which the sagacious heads were resisting her love, Lady Glencora came to her cousin in Queen Anne Street, and told Alice all that tale. "Was Alice," she asked, "afraid of the marquises and the countesses, or of all the rank and all the money which they boasted?" Alice answered that she was not at all afraid of them.

ON the day after the arrival of Henry and his queen in Paris, that marvellous banquet, described as 'the feast of kings, was given in the great hall of the Old Temple; and a mighty entertainment it appears to have been, if we are to judge from the description of the chronicler, who tells us that 'never in times past was there given such a rich and splendid banquet, even in the time of Esther, or of Arthur, or of Charles. Besides three kings those of Navarre, and France, and England, with their queens there were present eighteen countesses, and twenty-five counts, and twelve bishops; not to mention a host of noble knights and ladies knights illustrious for their valour, and ladies celebrated for their beauty.

The Generall after his arriual in the Countesses sound, spent no time in vaine, but immediately at his first landing called the chiefe Captaines of his Councell together, and consulted with them for the speedier execution of such things as then they had in hand. As first, for searching and finding out good Minerall for the Miners to be occupyed on.

"She was to be seen on the terrace at Windsor, walking with the consorts of dukes, and with countesses, and wives of English barons, and the whole gay group might be heard calling one another by their Christian names." No wonder that the women of fashion, none of them saints, loved Oldfield and winked at the elasticity of her moral ethics.

There was no truckling to greatness. The bishop and abbot writhed and struggled in the grasp of Death, while the miser clutched at his gold, and if there were some nuns, and some poor ploughmen who willingly clasped his bony fingers and obeyed his summons joyfully, there were countesses and prioresses who tried to beat him off, or implored him to wait.

Modesty forbids that we should reveal the names of the heart-broken countesses and dear marchionesses who are pining for every one of the contributors in PUNCH. If anybody wants to know how intimately authors are connected with the fashionable world, they have but to read the genteel novels. What refinement and delicacy pervades the works of Mrs. Barnaby!

Some people said the countesses did it for him, and some said that it was the dukes; while others, again, declared that the Jews were his most generous friends. At any rate he still seemed to live as he had always lived, setting tradesmen at defiance, and laughing to scorn all the rules which regulate the lives of other men.

And now a dance and masquerade of figures, reeling from the side-doors, among the knights and dames. Some sultan leads a sultaness; some emperor, a queen; and jeweled sword-hilts of carpet knights fling back the glances tossed by coquettes of countesses. On this, the curtain drops; and there the poor old organ stands, begrimed, and black, and rickety.

This good-looking, well-bred young officer had been an enthusiastic admirer of the two Countesses W., mother and daughter, during a tolerably long leave of absence, which he spent with his relations in Vienna.

She took refuge on the firm ground of fiction, through which indeed there curled the blue river of truth. She knew swarms of stories, mostly those of the novels she had read; relating them with a memory that never faltered and a wealth of detail that was Maisie's delight. They were all about love and beauty and countesses and wickedness.