`Sit down,' said Cleopatra, listlessly waving her fan, `a long way off. Don't come too near me, for I am frightfully faint and sensitive this morning, and you smell of the Sun. You are absolutely tropical.'

`By George, Ma'am,' said the Major, `the time has been when Joseph Bagstock has been grilled and blistered by the Sun; the time was, when he was forced, Ma'am, into such full blow, by high hothouse heat in the West Indies, that he was known as the Flower. A man never heard of Bagstock, Ma'am, in those days; he heard of the Flower--the Flower of Ours. The Flower may have faded, more or less, Ma'am,' observed the Major, dropping into a much nearer chair than had been indicated by his cruel Divinity, `but it is a tough plant yet, and constant as the evergreen.'

Here the Major, under cover of the dark room, shut up one eye, rolled his head like a Harlequin, and, in his great self-satisfaction, perhaps went nearer to the confines of apoplexy than he had ever gone before.

`Where is Mrs. Granger?' inquired Cleopatra of her page.

Withers believed she was in her own room.

`Very well,' said Mrs. Skewton. `Go away, and shut the door. I am engaged.'

As Withers disappeared, Mrs. Skewton turned her head languidly towards the Major, without otherwise moving, and asked him how his friend was?

`Dombey, Ma'am,' returned the Major, with a facetious gurgling in his throat, `is as well as a man in his condition can be. His condition is a desperate one, Ma'am. He is touched, is Dombey! Touched!' cried the Major. `He is bayonetted through the body.'

Cleopatra cast a sharp look at the Major, that contrasted forcibly with the affected drawl in which she presently said--

`Major Bagstock, although I know but little of the world,--nor can I really regret my inexperience, for I fear it is a false place, full of withering conventionalities: where Nature is but little regarded, and where the music of the heart, and the gushing of the soul, and all that sort of thing, which is so truly poetical, is seldom heard,--I cannot misunderstand your meaning. There is an allusion to Edith--to my extremely dear child,' said Mrs. Skewton, tracing the outline of her eyebrows with her forefinger, `in your words, to which the tenderest of chords vibrates excessively!'

`Bluntness, Ma'am,' returned the Major, `has ever been the characteristic of the Bagstock breed. You are right, Joe admits it.'

`And that allusion,' pursued Cleopatra, `would involve one of the most--if not positively the most--touching, and thrilling, and sacred emotions of which our sadly-fallen nature is susceptible, I conceive.'

The Major laid his hand upon his lips, and wafted a kiss to Cleopatra, as if to identify the emotion in question.

`I feel that I am weak. I feel that I am wanting in that energy, which should sustain a mama: not to say a parent: on such a subject,' said Mrs. Skewton, trimming her lips with the laced edge of her pocket-handkerchief; `but I can hardly approach a topic so excessively momentous to my dearest Edith without a feeling of faintness. Nevertheless, bad man, as you have boldly remarked upon it, and as it has occasioned me great anguish:' Mrs. Skewton touched her left side with her fan: `I will not shrink from my duty.'

The Major, under cover of the dimness, swelled, and swelled, and rolled his purple face about, and winked his lobster eye, until he fell into a fit of wheezing, which obliged him to rise and take a turn or two about the room, before his fair friend could proceed.