were very sweet to his
ear.

She loved to listen to him, however, better than to speak herself, and
he contrived to please and interest her in all he said, gently moving
all sorts of various feelings, sometimes making her smile gayly,
sometimes muse thoughtfully, and sometimes rendering her almost sad. If
he had been the most practiced love-maker in the world, he could not
have done better with a mind like that of Emily Hastings.

He heard of her proposed visit to Mrs. Hazleton with pleasure, and
expressed it. "I am very glad to hear you are to be with her," he said,
"for I do not think Mrs. Hazleton is well. She has lost her usual
spirits, and has been very grave and thoughtful when I have seen her
lately."

"Oh, if I can cheer and soothe her," cried Emily eagerly, "how
delightful my visit will be to me. Mrs. Hazleton says in her letter that
she is unwell; and that decided me to go to her, rather than to London."

"To London!" exclaimed Mr. Marlow, "I had no idea that you proposed such
a journey. Oh, Sir Philip, do not take your daughter to London. Friends
of mine there are often in the habit of bringing in fresh and beautiful
flowers from the country; but I always see that first they become dull
and dingy with the smoke and heavy air, and then wither away and perish;
and often in gay parties, I have thought that I saw in the young and
beautiful around me the same dulling influence, the same withering, both
of the body and the heart."

Sir Philip Hastings smiled pleasantly, and assured his young friend that
he had no desire or intention of going to the capital except for one
month in the winter, and Emily looked up brightly, saying, "For my part,
I only wish that even then I could be left behind. When last I was
there, I was so tired of the blue velvet lining of the gilt _vis-a-vis_,
that I used to try and paint fancy pictures of the country upon it as I
drove through the streets with mamma."

At length Emily set out in the heavy family coach, with her maid and Sir
Philip for her escort. Progression was slow in those days compared with
our own, when a man can get as much event into fifty years as Methuselah
did into a thousand. The journey took three hours at the least; but it
seemed short to Emily, for at the end of the first hour they were
overtaken by Mr. Marlow on horseback, and he rode along with them to the
gate of Mrs. Hazleton's house. He was an admirable horseman, for he had
not only a good but a grace