h! if she be attached elsewhere'--and he seemed so much relieved,
that Mrs. Ponsonby was sorry to be obliged to contradict him in haste,
and explain that she did not believe Fitzjocelyn's heart to be yet
developed; whereupon he was again greatly vexed. 'So he has offered
himself without attachment. I beg your pardon, Mary; I am sorry your
daughter should have been so treated.'

'Do not misunderstand me. He is strangely youthful and simple, bent on
pleasing you, and fancying his warm, brotherly feeling to be what you
desire.'

'It would be the safest foundation.'

'Yes, if he were ten years older, and had seen the world; but in these
things he is like a child, and it would be dangerous to influence him.
Do not take it to heart; you ought to be contented, for I saw nothing
so plainly as that he loves nobody half so well as you. Only be
patient with him.'

'You are the same Mary as ever,' he said, softened; and she left him,
hoping that she had secured a favourable audience for his son, who soon
appeared at the window, somewhat like a culprit.

'I could not help it!' he said.

'No; but you may set a noble aim before you--you may render yourself
worthy of her esteem and confidence, and in so doing you will fulfil my
fondest hopes.'

'I asked her to try me, but they would make no conditions. I am sorry
this could not be, since you wished it.'

'If you are not sorry on your own account, there are no regrets to be
wasted on mine.'

'Candidly, father,' said Louis, 'much as I like her, I cannot be sorry
to keep my youth and liberty a little longer.'

'Then you should never have entered on the subject at all,' said Lord
Ormersfield, beginning to write a letter; and poor Louis, in his
praiseworthy effort not to be reserved with him, found he had been
confessing that he had not only been again making a fool of himself,
but, what was less frequent and less pardonable, of his father
likewise. He limped out at the window, and was presently found by his
great-aunt, reading what he called a raving novel, to see how he ought
to have done it. She shook her head at him, and told him that he was
not even decently concerned.

'Indeed I am,' he replied. 'I wished my father to have had some peace
of mind about me, and it does not flatter one's vanity.'

Dear, soft-hearted Aunt Kitty, with all her stores of comfort ready
prepared, and unable to forgive, or even credit, the rejection of her
Louis, without a prior attachm