Mr. Buchanan's fine denunciations of freebooters had only been fine words for the public ear; secretly he cherished a penchant for freebooters, or rather for the friends of freebooters; and, under those circumstances, to be presented, by his own agent, with the very chief of the freebooters, as a criminal and a scamp, was the most unheard-of simplicity of understanding, and the most astounding literalness of obedience, in any subordinate.

"I hope," said Mr. Chromatic, "it may be Tenorina, for I imagine Graziosa has conceived a penchant for Sir Patrick O'Prism.

John Effingham knew the penchant of the young man, and when he said that he came happily to preserve the equilibrium, he alluded to this striking difference in the characters of their two friends.

"We have all seen your penchant for Curzon, and his for you, for three days past; but Octavia is as tough as lignum-vitae, I regret to assure you, my dear Miss Harz, and your chance is as blue as your spirits, or the flames of snap-dragon, or Marion's eyes.

At present the rich man's paucity of originality is so painful that we even welcome a certain millionaire's penchant for collecting fleashe, it is rumoured, having paid as much as a thousand dollars for specimens of a particularly rare species.