 it of use to Science.«
    He gave a laugh of good humour.
    »Your laughter, Horace, is a capital comment on your wit.«
    Willoughby said it with the air of one who has flicked a whip.
    »'Tis a genial advertisement of a vacancy,« said De Craye.
    »Precisely: three parts auctioneer to one for the property.«
    »Oh! if you have a musical quack, score it a point in his favour,
Willoughby, though you don't swallow his drug.«
    »If he means to be musical, let him keep time.«
    »Am I late?« said De Craye to the ladies, proving himself an adept in the
art of being gracefully vanquished and so winning tender hearts.
    Willoughby had refreshed himself. At the back of his mind there was a
suspicion that his adversary would not have yielded so flatly without an
assurance of practically triumphing, secretly getting the better of him; and it
filled him with venom for a further bout at the next opportunity: but as he had
been sarcastic and mordant, he had shown Clara what he could do in a way of
speaking different from the lamentable cooing stuff, gasps and feeble
protestations to which, he knew not how, she reduced him. Sharing the opinion of
his race, that blunt personalities, or the pugilistic form, administered
directly on the salient features, are exhibitions of mastery in such encounters,
he felt strong and solid, eager for the successes of the evening. De Craye was
in the first carriage as escort to the ladies Eleanor and Isabel. Willoughby,
with Clara, Lætitia and Dr. Middleton followed, all silent, for the Rev. Doctor
was ostensibly pondering; and Willoughby was damped a little when he unlocked
his mouth to say:
    »And yet I have not observed that Colonel De Craye is anything of a
Celtiberian Egnatius meriting fustigation for an untimely display of
well-whitened teeth, sir: quicquid est, ubicunque est, quodcunque agit, renidet:
- ha? a morbus neither charming nor urbane to the general eye, however
consolatory to the actor. But this gentleman does not offend so, or I am so
strangely prepossessed in his favour as to be an incompetent witness.«
    Dr. Middleton's persistent ha? eh? upon an honest frown of inquiry plucked
an answer out of Willoughby, that was meant to be humourously scornful and soon
became apologetic under the Doctor's interrogatively grasping gaze.
    »These Irishmen,« Willoughby said, »will play the professional jester, as if
it were an office they were born to. We
