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 pleasure as it was in his nature to feel, in baffling them.

"Lady Sarah Mortimer takes them; and it is not a subscription concert, only one of the Duchess's morning fêtes; begins at three, I think the card said."

A card! a private party! Lady Sarah for a chaperone! the Baroness was absolutely silenced by astonishment and vexation at her mistaken treatment of the Hopkinsons. Rachel looked amused, and viewing through her glass the groups on the lawn, observed that their picnic seemed to be going off successfully. This roused Baroness Sampson to a sense of her patroness duties. Various young men were dispatched with peremptory messages to the red-coated bargemen, and finally the boat was induced to move slowly on, the band of course playing "Partant pour la Syrie," a point of the globe the Lord Mayor's barge was most incompetent to reach.

"Now, Aunt," said Blanche, who had withdrawn with Lady Sarah to her own quiet