pectacle,' said Louis. 'I
do not mean to intermit the Yeomanry ball, if it take place while I am
at home. The chaperons are the best company, after all. Reconsider it,
my dear aunt, or you will keep me from coming at all.'

Lady Conway was only considering of tableaux, and Louis took fire at
the notion: he already beheld Waverley in his beloved Yeomanry suit,
Isabel as Flora, Clara as Davie Gellatley--the character she would most
appreciate. Isabel roused herself to say that tableaux were very dull
work to all save the actors, and soon were mere weariness to them. Her
stepmother told her she had once been of a different mind, when she had
been Isabel Bruce, kneeling in her cell, the ring before her. 'I was
young enough then to think myself Isabel,' was her answer, and she drew
the more diligently because Fitzjocelyn could not restrain an
interjection, and a look which meant, 'What an Isabel she must have
been!'

She sat passive while Lady Conway and Louis decked up a scene for Flora
MacIvor; but presently it appeared that the Waverley of the piece was
to be, according to Louis, not the proper owner of the Yeomanry
uniform, but James Frost. His aunt exclaimed, and the rehearsals were
strong temptation; but he made answer, 'No--you must not reckon on me:
my father would not like it.'

The manful childishness, the childish manfulness of such a reply, were
impenetrable. If his two-and-twenty years did not make him ashamed of
saying so, nothing else could, and it covered a good deal. He knew that
his father's fastidious pride would dislike his making a spectacle of
himself, and thought that it would be presuming unkindly on to-day's
liberty to involve himself in what would necessitate terms more
intimate than were desired.

The luncheon silenced the consultation, which was to be a great secret
from the children; but afterwards, when it was resumed, with the
addition of James Frost, Fitzjocelyn was vexed to find the tableaux
discarded; not avowedly because he excluded himself from a share, but
because the style of people might not understand them. The
entertainment was to be a Christmas-tree--not so hackneyed a spectacle
in the year 1848 as in 1857--and Louis launched into a world of
couplets for mottoes. Next came the question of guests, when Lady
Conway read out names from the card-basket, and Fitzjocelyn was in
favour of everybody, till Jem, after many counter-statements, assured
Lady Conway that he was trying