Miss King! I can't bear handsome men. I see his
frivolity and shallowness; and for amiability, what do you think of
keeping his cousin all the morning from shooting for such a mere
nothing, and then sending him off for a ten miles' walk?

'For my part, I confess that I was struck with the good sense and
kindness he showed in our tete-a-tete--I thought it justified Mr.
Dynevor's description.'

'Yes, I have no doubt that there is some good in him. He might have
done very well, if he had not always been an idol.'

Isabel was the more provoked with Lord Fitzjocelyn, when, by-and-by, he
appeared in the drawing-room, and related the result of his cousin's
mission. Jem, who would know better than himself where to find his
property, had not chosen to believe his description of the spot where
he had left the lotion, and, in the twilight, Louis had found his foot
coiled about by the feelers and claws of a formidable monster--no other
than a bottled scorpion, a recent present from Captain Hannaford. He
did not say how emblematic the scorpion lotion was of that which Jem
had been administering to his wounded spirit all the morning, but he
put the story in so ludicrous a light that Isabel decided that Mr.
Dynevor was ungenerously and ungratefully treated as a butt; and she
turned away in displeasure from the group whom the recital was amusing,
to offer her sympathy to the tutor, and renew the morning's
conversation.

CHAPTER XIII.

FROSTY, BUT KINDLY.

Go not eastward, go not westward,
For a stranger whom we know not.
Like a fire upon the hearthstone,
Is a neighbour's homely daughter;
Like the moonlight or the starlight,
Is the handsomest of strangers.
Legend of Hiawatha.

'What a laboured production had the letter been! How many copies had
the statesman written! how late had he sat over it at night! how much
more consideration had he spent on it than on papers involving the
success of his life! A word too much or too little might precipitate
the catastrophe, and the bare notion of his son's marriage with a pupil
of Lady Conway renewed and gave fresh poignancy to the past.

At first his anxieties were past mention; but he grew restless under
them, and the instinct of going to Mrs. Ponsonby prevailed. At least,
she would know what had transpired from James, or from Fitzjocelyn to
Mrs. Frost.

She had heard of ecstatic letters from both the cousins, and Mary had
been de