but what would you say if I told you that you might go?"
"Why I should say," answered Henrietta, "that I shall not be asked!"
"But you can easily procure an invitation," said Lord Marchmont, who now succeeded in making his wife at least look astonished. "In short," continued he, assuming an air of mystery, "many circumstances have occurred lately that give me a very different view of things to what I had formerly. I believe Sir Robert Walpole to have been a most misrepresented man: I owe him some atonement; my sense of justice dictates it: I mean to go to his fête!"
"Do you?" was the brief answer.
"Yes, I feel that I ought; and with me, to feel that I ought to do a thing, is to do it!" added he, looking quite Roman with excess of virtue.
He was obliged, however, to be content with his own applause, for his wife remained silent; and, after a pause of conscious self-satisfaction, he continued:—
