peculiar dry smile: "when shall I have the pleasure of seeing her?"

"I want you to come with me to-night to the Garden," replies the
other; "she will be in Lady Heatherington's box, and I will introduce
you."

So that evening John Ingerfield goes to Covent Garden Theatre, with
the blood running a trifle quicker in his veins, but not much, than
would be the case were he going to the docks to purchase tallow--
examines, covertly, the proposed article from the opposite side of
the house, and approves her--is introduced to her, and, on closer
inspection, approves her still more--receives an invitation to visit-
-visits frequently, and each time is more satisfied of the rarity,
serviceableness, and quality of the article.

If all John Ingerfield requires for a wife is a beautiful social
machine, surely here he has found his ideal. Anne Singleton, only
daughter of that persistently unfortunate but most charming of
baronets, Sir Harry Singleton (more charming, it is rumoured, outside
his family circle than within it), is a stately graceful, high-bred
woman. Her portrait, by Reynolds, still to be seen above the carved
wainscoting of one of the old City halls, shows a wonderfully
handsome and clever face, but at the same time a wonderfully cold and
heartless one. It is the face of a woman half weary of, half
sneering at the world. One reads in old family letters, whereof the
ink is now very faded and the paper very yellow, long criticisms of
this portrait. The writers complain that if the picture is at all
like her she must have greatly changed since her girlhood, for they
remember her then as having a laughing and winsome expression.