Ah! if Tarquin had but known women as well as I do, he would have had no reason to be rough with Lucretia.

'T is a thousand pities that experience comes, in women as in the world, just when it begins to be no longer of use to us!" As he made these moral reflections, Mauleverer gained the dancers, and beheld Lucy listening, with downcast eyes and cheeks that evidently blushed, to a young man whom Mauleverer acknowledged at once to be one of the best-looking fellows he had ever seen.

The stranger's countenance, despite an extreme darkness of complexion, was, to be sure, from the great regularity of the features, rather effeminate; but, on the other hand, his figure, though slender and graceful, betrayed to an experienced eye an extraordinary proportion of sinew and muscle; and even the dash of effeminacy in the countenance was accompanied by so manly and frank an air, and was so perfectly free from all coxcombry or self-conceit, that it did not in the least decrease the prepossessing effect of his appearance.

An angry and bitter pang shot across that portion of Mauleverer's frame which the earl thought fit, for want of another name, to call his heart.

"How cursedly pleased she looks!" muttered he.