the moment in which she beheld his friend Maintry appear in the character of a thief; and sweet to her ears as was the title of her new conquest, she did not suffer it to charm away her resolution of discovering whether he were poor or rich. Every inquiry tended to prove that she was safe in the direction which her ambition and her love had now taken. Lord Mucklebury was a widower, with an only son very nobly provided for, and as capable of making a good jointure, if he married again, as a widow's heart could wish.

Now then all that remained to be done was to foster the admiration she had inspired into a passion strong enough to induce the noble Viscount to settle that jointure upon her. Nothing could be more just than her reasoning—nothing more resolute than her purpose. She knew she was handsome, she felt it to be advisable that she should appear rich; and with the devoted feeling of a warrior who throws away his scabbard as he rushes to the onslaught, Mrs. Barnaby heroically set herself to win her way to victory—coûte qui coûte.

CHAPTER XV.

NEW HOPES BEGET A NEW STYLE OF EXISTENCE—A PARTY.—AGNES HAS SOME SUCCESS, WHICH MRS. BARNABY DOES NOT QUITE APPROVE.—LORD MUCKLEBURY ENTERS INTO EPISTOLARY CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WIDOW, BY WHICH HER HOPES ARE RAISED TO THE HIGHEST PITCH.—BUT LORD MUCKLEBURY LEAVES CHELTENHAM.

Lord Mucklebury was a gay man in every sense of the word. He loved a jest almost as well as a dinner, and would rather have been quoted as the sayer of a good thing than as the doer of a great one. He had enjoyed life with fewer drawbacks from misfortune than most men; and having reached the age of forty, had made up his mind, as soberly as he could do on any subject, that the only privilege of the aristocracy worth valuing was the leisure they enjoyed, or might enjoy if they chose it, for amusing themselves. Nature intended him for a good-tempered man, but fun had spoiled him; having laughed with everybody for the first twenty years of his life, he learned during the second that it was a better joke still to laugh at them; and accordingly the principal material for the wit on which his reputation rested was derived, at the time Mrs. Barnaby made his acquaintance, from an aptitude to perceive the absurdities of his fellow creatures, and a most unshrinking audacity in exposing them.

Having pointed out Mrs. Barnaby to a set of his clever friends as the joke in which he meant to indulge during the three or four weeks of Cheltenham discipline to which