In the mean while Beau had very leisurely approached the bilious-looking
terrier; and after walking three times round him, with a stare and a
small sniff of superb impertinence, halted with great composure, and
lifting his hind leg-- O Beau, Beau, Beau! your historian blushes for
your breeding, and, like Sterne's recording angel, drops a tear upon the
stain which washes it from the register--but not, alas, from the back of
the bilious terrier! The space around was wide, Beau; you had all the
world to choose: why select so specially for insult the single spot on
which reposed the wornout and unoffending? O dainty Beau! O dainty
world! Own the truth, both of ye. There is something irresistibly
provocative of insult in the back of a shabby-looking dog! The poor
terrier, used to affronts, raised its heavy eyelids, and shot the gleam
of just indignation from its dark eyes. But it neither stirred nor
growled, and Beau, extremely pleased with his achievement, wagged his
tail in triumph and returned to his master,--perhaps, in parliamentary
phrase, to "report proceedings and ask leave to sit again."

"I wonder," soliloquized Percival St. John, "what that poor fellow is
thinking of? Perhaps he is poor; indeed, no doubt of it, now I look
again. And I so rich! I should like to-- Hem! let's see what he's made
of."

Herewith Percival approached, and with all a boy's half-bashful, half-
saucy frankness, said: "A fine prospect, sir." The pedestrian started,
and threw a rapid glance over the brilliant figure that accosted him.
Percival St. John was not to be abashed by stern looks; but that glance
might have abashed many a more experienced man. The glance of a squire
upon a corn-law missionary, of a Crockford dandy upon a Regent Street
tiger, could not have been more disdainful.