engaged in amusing and instructing themselves,
accompanied by her son William, who arrived in his boots from the
kennel.

"Bravi, bravi! Oh, charming!" said the Countess, clapping her hands,
nodding with one of her best smiles to Harry Warrington, and darting a
look at his partner, which my Lady Fanny perfectly understood; and
so, perhaps, did my Lady Maria at her harpsichord, for she played with
redoubled energy, and nodded her waving curls, over the chords.

"Infernal young Choctaw! Is he teaching Fanny the war-dance? and is Fan
going to try her tricks upon him now?" asked Mr. William, whose temper
was not of the best.

And that was what Lady Castlewood's look said to Fanny. "Are you going
to try your tricks upon him now?"

She made Harry a very low curtsey, and he blushed, and they both stopped
dancing, somewhat disconcerted. Lady Maria rose from the harpsichord and
walked away.

"Nay, go on dancing, young people! Don't let me spoil sport, and let me
play for you," said the Countess; and she sate down to the instrument
and played.

"I don't know how to dance," says Harry, hanging his head down, with a
blush that the Countess's finest carmine could not equal.

"And Fanny was teaching you? Go on teaching him, dearest Fanny!"

"Go on, do!" says William, with a sidelong growl.

"I--I had rather not show off my awkwardness in company," adds Harry,
recovering himself. "When I know how to dance a minuet, be sure I will
ask my cousin to walk one with me."

"That will be very soon, dear Cousin Warrington, I am certain," remarks
the Countess, with her most gracious air.

"What game is she hunting now?" thinks Mr. William to himself, who
cannot penetrate his mother's ways; and that lady, fondly calling her
daughter to her elbow, leaves the room.

They are no sooner in the tapestried passage leading away to their
own apartment, but Lady Castlewood's bland tone entirely changes. "You
booby!" she begins to her adored Fanny. "You double idiot! What are
you going to do with the Huron? You don't want to marry a creature like
that, and be a squaw in a wigwam?"

"Don't, mamma!" gasps Lady Fanny. Mamma was pinching her ladyship's arm
black-and-blue. "I am sure our cousin is very well," Fanny whimpers,
"and you said so yourself."

"Very well! Yes; and heir to a swamp, a negro, a log-cabin and a barrel
of tobacco! My Lady Frances Esmond, do you remember what your ladyship's
rank is, and what your name is, and who was yo