who joined to a strong desire to contradict Lady Portmore a great disinclination to move.
"Oh, Lady Teviot has made over her powers to me this evening. I think, Teviot, your little wife has abdicated, and has become Helen Beaufort again. She and her brother have been reading letters and whispering to each other for the last half-hour. Are you shut out of their councils?"
"Lady Teviot has not had a very good account of her sister," he said, coldly, "and Beaufort was naturally anxious to see the letters."
"Dear, I am very sorry; I wish they had consulted me—I am a great homœopathist; I dare say Helen wishes us all away, that she might go to the Waldegraves; but really we have collected such a large party, that it will be difficult to disperse our forces. Pray who is that foreigner playing at whist?"
"Don't you know him? M. de la Grange; he comes over to England every year, and fancies himself a complete Englishman in language, pursuits, and habits, but without the slightest aptitude for either. He goes in the winter to any country-house of any description to which he can get himself invited, without much discrimination as to the society he meets there. 'It is all,' he says, 'the charming life of castle'; and between that and Melton, where he passes a miserable month of falls and fright, he makes out an existence which he thinks perfection. He is a good-natured animal, and I never grudge him a fortnight's shooting."
"You must introduce him to me; I dare say he has heard of me at Paris, and in London: all foreigners look to me as their patroness, as a matter of course. But come, Helen's colloquy is at an end. Beaufort, come here, I am so sorry your sister is ill, but I want you to sing. Miss Douglas is obdurate, but Mary will accompany you."
