cal as ever,--lower than it was
once, and more subdued in its key, but steadfast and untremulous: it was
no longer the voice that made "my soul plant itself in the ears." (1)
The event was over, and I knew that the dream had fled from the waking
world forever.

"Another old friend!" as Lady Ulverstone came forth from a little group
of children, leading one fine boy of nine years old, while one, two or
three years younger, clung to her gown. "Another old friend! and," added
Lady Ulverstone, after the first kind greetings, "two new ones when the
old are gone." The slight melancholy left the voice as, after presenting
to me the little viscount, she drew forward the more bashful Lord
Albert, who indeed had something of his grandsire and namesake's look of
refined intelligence in his brow and eyes.

The watchful tact of Lord Castleton was quick in terminating whatever
embarrassment might belong to these introductions, as, leaning lightly
on my arm, he drew me forward and presented me to the guests more
immediately in our neighborhood, who seemed by their earnest cordiality
to have been already prepared for the introduction.

Dinner was now announced, and I welcomed that sense of relief and
segregation with which one settles into one's own "particular" chair at
your large miscellaneous entertainment.

I stayed three days at that house. How truly had Trevanion said that
Fanny would make "an excellent great lady." What perfect harmony between
her manners and her position! just retaining enough of the girl's
seductive gayety and bewitching desire to please, to soften the new
dignity of bearing she had unconsciously assumed,--less, after all, as
great lady, than as wife and mother; with a fine breeding, perhaps
a little languid and artificial as compared with her lord's,--which
sprang, fresh and healthful, wholly from nature,--but still so void of
all the chill of condescension or the subtle impertinence that belongs
to that order of the inferior noblesse which boasts the name of
"exclusives;" with what grace, void of prudery, she took the adulation
of the flatterers, turning from them to her children, or escaping
lightly to Lord Castleton, with an ease that drew round her at once the
protection of hearth and home!

And certainly Lady Castleton was more incontestably beautiful than Fanny
Trevanion had been.

All this I acknowledged, not with a sigh and a pang, but with a
pure feeling of pride and delight. I might have love