Page:Glenarvon (Volume 1).djvu/260

 *shion and power, when skilfully applied. After this, she called Calantha: a slight exordium followed then a wily pointed catechism; her Highness nodding at intervals, and dropping short epigrammatic sentences, when necessarry, to such as were in attendance around her. "Is she acting?" said Calantha, at length, in a whisher, addressing the sallow complexioned Poet, who stood sneering and simpering behind her chair. "Is she acting, or is this reality?" "It is the only reality you will ever find in the Princess," returned her friend. She acts the Princess of Madagascar from morning till night, and from night till morning. You may fall from favour, but you are now at the height: no one ever advanced further—none ever continued there long."

"But why," said Lady Avondale, "do the great Nabob, and all the other Lords in waiting, with that black hord of savages"—"Reviewers, you mean, and