the
goodness to indulge my caprice in this instance.'

I shall obey your ladyship, and be silent, whatever pleasure it might
give me to speak on that subject,' said the count; 'and I trust Lady
Dashfort will reward me by the assurance that, however playfully she may
have just now spoken, she seriously disapproves and is shocked.'

'Oh, shocked! shocked to death! if that will satisfy you, my dear
count.'

The count, obviously, was not satisfied; he had civil, as well as
military courage, and his sense of right and wrong could stand against
the raillery and ridicule of a fine lady.

The conversation ended: Lady Dashfort thought it would have no further
consequences; and she did not regret the loss of a man like Count
O'Halloran, who lived retired in his castle, and who could not have
any influence upon the opinion of the fashionable world. However,
upon turning from the count to Lord Colambre, who she thought had been
occupied with Lady Isabel, and to whom she imagined all this dispute was
uninteresting, she perceived, by his countenance, that she had made a
great mistake. Still she trusted that her power over Lord Colambre
was sufficient easily to efface whatever unfavourable impression this
conversation had made upon his mind. He had no personal interest in the
affair; and she had generally found that people are easily satisfied
about any wrong or insult, public or private, in which they have no
immediate concern. But all the charms of her conversation were now tried
in vain to reclaim him from the reverie into which he had fallen.

His friend Sir James Brooke's parting advice occurred to our hero; his
eyes began to open to Lady Dashfort's character; and he was, from this
moment, freed from her power. Lady Isabel, however, had taken no part
in all this--she was blameless; and, independently of her mother, and
in pretended opposition of sentiment, she might have continued to retain
the influence she had gained over Lord Colambre, but that a slight
accident revealed to him her real disposition.

It happened, on the evening of this day, that Lady Isabel came into the
library with one of the young ladies of the house, talking very eagerly,
without perceiving Lord Colambre, who was sitting in one of the recesses
reading.

'My dear creature, you are quite mistaken,' said Lady Isabel, 'he was
never a favourite of mine; I always detested him; I only flirted with
him to plague his wife. Oh that wife, my dear Elizabeth,