"Well! don't read it out, at
any rate. That's about my other flame, my first--Lady Mirabel that is
now. I saw her last night at Lady Whiston's. She asked me to a party
at her house, and said, that, as old friends, we ought to meet
oftener. She has been seeing me any time these two years in town, and
never thought of inviting me before; but seeing Wenham talking to me,
and Monsieur Dubois, the French literary man, who had a dozen orders
on, and might have passed for a Marshal of France, she condescended to
invite me. The Claverings are to be there on the same evening. Won't
it be exciting to meet one's two flames at the same table?" "Two
flames!--two heaps of burnt-out cinders," Warrington said. "Are both
the beauties in this book?"
"Both or something like them," Pen said. "Leonora, who marries the
duke, is the Fotheringay. I drew the duke from Magnus Charters, with
whom I was at Oxbridge; it's a little like him; and Miss Amory is
Neaera. By gad, Warrington, I did love that first woman! I thought of
her as I walked home from Lady Whiston's in the moonlight; and the
whole early scenes came back to me as if they had been yesterday.
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