gford is very dull. Oh, yes, I will go out with the hounds now and
then, if there is not a frost. I should rather like a frost for my
part."

It was a hunting lady who had started this new conversation, into which
the stranger had drifted away, leaving Ursula stranded. She was slightly
piqued, it must be allowed, and when Sophy asked her after dinner how
she liked her companion, made a dignified reply.

"I have no doubt he is very nice," she said; "I don't know much of
gentlemen. He talks of papa as if he were a school-master, and thinks
Carlingford will be dull."

"So it is, Ursula. I have often heard you say so."

"Yes, perhaps; but a stranger ought to be civil," said the girl,
offended; and she went and entrenched herself by the side of Cousin
Anne, where the new pupil could not come near her. Indeed he did not
seem very anxious to do so, as Ursula soon saw. She blushed very hotly
all by herself, under Cousin Anne's shadow: that she could have been so
absurd as ever to think--But his size, and the weight over which he had
lamented, and his abundant whiskers and large shirt front, made it quite
impossible for Ursula to think of him as a person to be educated. It
must be Miss Beecham, she said to herself.

No thoughts of this kind crossed Mr. Clarence Copperhead's mind, as he
stretched his big limbs before the drawing-room fire after dinner, and
said "Brava!" when the ladies sang. He knew "Brava" was the right thing
to say. He liked to be at the Hall, which he had never visited before,
and to know that it was undeniable gentry which surrounded him, and
which at the piano was endeavouring to gain his approbation. He was so
much his father's son that he had a sense of pleasure and triumph in
being thus elevated; and he had a feeling, more or less, of contempt for
the clergyman, "only a parson," who was to be his coach. He felt the
power and the beauty of money almost as much as his father did. What was
there he could not buy with it? the services of the most learned pundit
in existence, for what was learning? or the prettiest woman going to be
his wife, if that was what he wanted. It may be supposed then that he
had very little attention indeed to bestow upon a girl like Ursula, who
was only the daughter of his coach--nobody at all in particular--and
that her foolish fancies on the subject might have been spared. He aired
himself on the hearth-rug with great satisfaction, giving now and then a
shake to one of his lo