"My first."
"And you have not secured a partner? Shall I find you one? What do you think of that pretty girl in pink?"
"I see her—but I cannot think of her."
"You are rather, perhaps, like a diplomatist in a new court, and your first object is to know who is who."
"I confess that on beginning to study the history of my own day I should like to distinguish the portraits that illustrate the memoir."
"Give me your arm, then, and we will come into the next room. We shall see the different notabilites enter one by one, and observe without being observed. This is the least I can do for a friend of Mr. Egerton's."
"Mr. Egerton, then," said Randal,—as they threaded their way through the space without the rope that protected the dancers,—"Mr. Egerton has had the good fortune to win your esteem even for his friends, however obscure?"
"Why, to say truth, I think no one whom Mr. Egerton calls his friend need long remain obscure, if he has the ambition to be otherwise; for Mr. Egerton holds it a maxim never to forget a friend nor a service."
"Ah, indeed!" said Randal, surprised.
"And therefore," continued Lady Frederick, "as he passes through life, friends gather round him. He will rise even higher yet. Gratitude, Mr. Leslie, is a very good policy."