"Hold your tongue, Cherry," said Major Smilax Dapper. "You're a——"
"A what, Thmilackth?" asked the youthful baronet.
"A bore—strike me!" replied the major.
There was a general laugh at the expense of Sir Cherry Bounce, who coloured up to the very roots of his hair.
"What's become of Harborough, does any one know?" said Lord Dunstable, when the cachinnation was concluded.
"Gone into the country with his friend Chichester, I believe," replied Greenwood. "Harborough and I have not spoken for a long time; but I heard of him a little while ago."
"A dreadful thing that was about his wife," observed the Honourable Augustus Smicksmack.
"I don't think Harborough cared much about it," returned Greenwood. "They had long led a cat-and-dog kind of a life. The moment Lady Cecilia's suicide reached the ears of Sir Rupert, who was in France at the time, he came over to England, and sold the few things which had belonged to his wife—her trinkets, I mean; for the house in Tavistock Square was a ready-furnished one."
"And that he gave up, I believe?" said Dunstable.
"Or rather the landlord took it away from him," answered Greenwood. "That intimacy with Reginald Tracy was a bad business for Lady Cecilia," he continued. "But I had my suspicions of him before the exposure took place. The fact is, I saw him at a masquerade ball one night, at Drury Lane theatre."