the inspiring galop, and seemed to have neither ear
nor eye for any one or anything else. "Caroline, do you permit your
daughter to play the coquette so early?"

"Better at seven than seventeen, Edward, believe me; had she numbered
the latter, I might be rather more uneasy, at present I can admire that
pretty little pair without any such feeling. Gertrude told me to-day,
she did not like to see her cousin Charles so shy, and she should do all
she could to make him as much at home as she and her brother are."

"She has succeeded, then, admirably," replied Edward, laughing, "for the
little rogue has not much shyness in him now. Herbert and Mary have got
that corner all to themselves; I should like to go slily behind them,
and find out what they are talking about."

"Try and remember what you used to talk about to your partners in this
very room, some twenty years back, and perhaps recollection will
satisfy your curiosity," said Lady St. Eval, smiling, but faintly,
however; the names Herbert and Mary had recalled a time when those names
had often been joined before, and the silent prayer arose that their
fates might not resemble those whose names they bore, that they might be
spared a longer time to bless those who loved them.

"Twenty years back, Caroline, what an undertaking. Allan is more like
the madcap I was then, so I can better enter into his feelings of
pleasure. By-the-bye, why are not Mrs. Cameron's family here to-night? I
half expected to meet them here yesterday."

"They spend this season with Sir Walter and Lady Cameron in Scotland,"
replied Lady St. Eval. "Florence declared she would take no excuse; the
Marquis and Marchioness of Malvern, with Emily and Louis, are there
also, and Lady Alford is to join them in a week or two."

"You were there last summer, were you not?"

"We were. They are one of the happiest couples I know, and their estate
is most beautiful. Florence declares that, were Sir Walter Scott still
living, she intended to have made him take her for a heroine, her
husband for a hero, and transport them some centuries back, to figure on
that same romantic estate in some very exciting scenes."

"Had he killed Cameron's first love and rendered him desperate, and made
Florence some consoling spirit, to remove his despair, instead of making
him so unromantically enabled to conquer his passion, because
unreturned. Why I could make as good a story as Sir Walter himself; if
she will reward me libe