" "Certainly, madam," replied the dowager, as, passing her compliments with those of Grace, she drew back from so open a conversation with creatures of such doubtful standing in the fashionable world.

The Chatterton and Jarvis families met in the rooms, soon after the arrival of the latter, when the lady of the knight, followed by both her daughters, approached the dowager with a most friendly salute of recognition.

Lady Lesbia's gowns and parasols had been admired, her engagement had furnished an infinity of gossip, and the fact of Montesma's constant attendance upon her had given zest to the situation, just that flavour of peril and fatality which the soul of society loveth. 'Is she going to marry them both?' asked an ancient dowager of the ever-young type.

In the evening, if there were visitors, a fire was lit in the library; otherwise the family again sat about the Marquise's lamp till the footman came in at ten with tisane and biscuits de Reims; after which every one bade the dowager good night and scattered down the corridors to chill distances marked by tapers floating in cups of oil.

" "Ah! Grace," and John was about to become what he had never been before- -sentimental- when he saw the carriage of Chatterton, containing the dowager and Catherine entering the parsonage gates.

" THE DIZAIN OF QUEENS OF THAT NOBLE MAKER IN THE FRENCH TONGUE, MESSIRE NICOLAS DE CAEN, DEDICATED TO THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS ISABELLA OF PORTUGAL, OF THE HOUSE OF THE INDOMITABLE ALFONSO HENRIQUES, AND DUCHESS DOWAGER OF BURGUNDY.

'Lonely,' echoed the dowager, with a sigh.

When he has spent all upon his pleasures, and has nothing left for sustenance, he espouses a hostess dowager, and resolves to lick himself whole again out of ale, and make it pay him back all the charges it has put him to.

'We have three-quarters of an hour to the good.' 'Half an hour for a stroll, and a quarter to make myself presentable after my long walk,' said Hammond, who did not wish to face the dowager and Lady Lesbia in disordered apparel.

Nothing but legacy-hunting he knew would induce the dowager to submit to such a banishment from the other sex; but that was so preferable to husband- hunting he was satisfied.

And pray, did he tell you what are his means of maintaining Lord Maulevrier's sister in the position to which her birth entitles her?' inquired the dowager, with crushing calmness.

Perhaps the old nobleman misunderstood the duchess-dowager when she explained the picture to him; or perhaps her grace did not choose to be quite so communicate as she could have been, and, therefore, fixed the sad event upon the gay Charley Brandon, in whose constellation of gay doings it would, indeed, be a romantic diamond of the first water.

Nobody pointed out that, as it happened, Currer Bell had provided her dowagers with "vast white wrappers" on the second night alarm.

* There has lately been published one of the most impudent things that ever was printed; it is called "The Irish Register," and is a list of all the unmarried women of any fashion in England, ranked in order, duchesses-dowager, ladies, widows, misses, &c., with their names at length, for the benefit of Irish fortune-hunters, or as it is said, for the incorporating and manufacturing of British commodities.

Richard, that he might make atonement to one parent for his breach of duty to the other, immediately sent orders for releasing the queen- dowager from the confinement in which she had long been detained; and he intrusted her with the government of England till his arrival in that kingdom.

I have seen dowagers at watering-places in a fever of anxiety about their rank and their consequence!

"Das war aber zu schon!" sighed a dowager near me.

If I should call on the viscountess (the Lady Juliana, who yet survived an ancient dowager of seventy), I shall want your attendance, and in your present garb you cannot fail to shock her delicate feelings.

She majestically crossed the drawing-room where Julie's bouquet had fallen, and when the door of the boudoir opened, said in a firm voice to the lackey who preceded her: "Announce the dowager Baroness de Croisilles.

Weddings are the season of love, thought the prudent dowager, and Grace is extremely pretty.