the diamond necklace she had recently purchased with Congreve's legacy—last memorial of the small vanity which had characterised him through life. The money now lavished on the ostentation of a splendid toy, what a blessing would it have been to some one struggling with life's worst difficulties—poverty and pretence!
Lord Peterborough was talking to her,—a man sent into the world to shew that the Amadis could have its prototype in reality; and yet all his heroic qualities dashed with a ridicule, as much as to say, the present age is quite unfit for them. Next came a crowd of young beauties, who shed their own brilliancy around; and near were a group of cavaliers, "fine gentlemen about town," who, whatever else they might doubt, had not a doubt of their own irresistibility. And, crowning glory of the evening! a conquest was made, a conquest so sudden, so brilliant, and so obvious, that it was enough to give any fête at which it occurred the immortality of a season.
At Lord Norbourne's express petition, the
