CHAPTER XIV.

How disgusting and sickening is the common-place of life-even its necessary business, but still more, its pleasures and its gauds, its follies and its mirth, -to the mourners !

Mr. Snuffles, who had been sent for by express, on the first serious apprehension of Lord Furstenroy's danger, and Lord Carmansdale, who was already in Paris, on his way back to Naples, were soon at hand. The first, as the family lawyer, and the other as chief executor and trustee, appointed in the will for the administration of the disposable effects, entered officially on the discharge of their duties; but they could not sympathize with the deep feeling and bitter affliction which oppressed every member of the family itself. It was arranged by them, that the remains of Lord Fletcher, and of the earl his father, should be laid in the same hearse, and removed to the family vault in Northamptonshire for interment.

It was well that these two individuals were at hand to superintend all the details of this melancholy business, for no member of the family was in a fit state to undertake it. Lady Fanny Bazancourt and her married sister secluded themselves in their own chambers; and by an unaccountable singularity of conduct, which no one but himself would have committed, it was discovered that our hero had suddenly disappeared the very morning after his father's death: he had quitted the house alone, and on horseback, at an early hour. The disposition of his father's property, the arrangement of the funeral procession, the consolation of the other members of his family -all were alike neglected—and why?

It must have been a powerful motive which could lead away one, who was usually so attentive to his duties as Richard Bazancourt. Nevertheless, no one could give any account of his plans or his intentions. The Comtesse de Carbonnelle, if she had a suspicion in her mind that his absence was somehow connected with their conversation of the yesternight in the garden, locked up the secret in her own bosom, and appeared to be overcome and totally engrossed by the severity of her affliction.

Meanwhile, two grand parties in Paris, an extra

ordinary event at this season of the year, divided the attention of Mr. Snuffles and Lord Carmansdale with their more serious and more melancholy offices. Both assemblies were to be given by two old English ladies resident at Paris, who were at the head of two opposite cliques or factions in society, and who consequently looked upon the success of these two rival parties as the test and criterion of their comparative popularity and influence.

Lady Constantia Pruderly was the great champion and defender of everything English. She had always in her mouth such phrases as the following: -"propriety of conduct"-" strictness of demeanour"-" unexceptionable deportment"—" domestic virtues”—“ correctness of manners”—and so forth. She was an old maid, and being exceedingly stiff and rigid in all her ideas, she had contrived to make herself rather odious in certain circles of society, by refusing to call upon or visit one or two ladies whose behaviour she was pleased to consider a little too free. Amongst others, the Countess Carbonnell, on account of her open flirtations with George Grainger, had attracted her unfavourable notice; and she had omitted her, on the occasion of her last party, from the list of her invitations. Accordingly, George

Grainger had long nourished a secret spite and dislike against the old lady, which her present issue of invitations for a new party gave him an opportunity of gratifying. Determined to have his revenge, and far from being overscrupulous as to the means he adopted to obtain it, our privileged friend, George Grainger, was guilty of an action which will justly scandalize the right-thinking portion of our readers. We are greatly shocked at it ourselves; but when a man once acquires a habit of hoaxing, there is no telling where he will stop.

George Grainger, by means of a bribe, obtained from one of Lady Constantia Pruderly's servants a list of the people's names, to whom invitations had been sent; and the morning before the night of the party, he sent round notes to each of the persons who had been asked, informing them that the assembly was put off, on account of the sudden indisposition of Lady Constantia Pruderly.

That excellent but unfortunate lady, by no means suspicious of any such abominable fraud, and bent on eclipsing the party of her rival, and establishing the triumph of her own principles on the ruin of those of her antagonist, had spared no expense upon the preparations for this evening. The time arrived :

-eight-nine-ten-eleven-hour after hour went by, and not a soul had yet appeared in her salons. Six rooms were lighted with chandeliers; the refreshments and the supper had been provided; several singers from the opera waited in vain by the piano to enchant the absent audience. At last, poor Lady Constantia, perceiving that some trick must have been played her, and foreseeing the consequent triumph of the rival party of the night, burst into a frenzy of rage, tears, regrets, threats, and asseverations, and was carried in hysterics to bed.

In the mean time, the dowager Mrs. Mac-Rubber, whose evenings of reception were less restricted and exclusive, and who was consequently a more generally popular person, was astonished and delighted at the increasing multitudes who flocked into her drawing-room. People, whom she had scarcely expected, from their known intimacy with her rival, Lady Constantia, crowded into her rooms. There was the strangest medley ever seen :-Lord Arthur Mullingham was jumbled against Monsieur Percent, the old Jew banker; a celebrated piano-forte manufacturer was in close contact with a German prince of the blood; a London brewer and an opposition member of the Chamber of Deputies were brought