d handsome face, only perhaps there were more lines in it than
he was entitled to at his age, for he was barely thirty. He greeted Miss
Carden with easy grace, and took no more notice of the other two, than
if they were chairs and tables.

Mr. Frederick Coventry had studied the great art of pleasing, and
had mastered it wonderfully; but he was not the man to waste it
indiscriminately.

He was there to please a young lady, to whom he was attached, not to
diffuse his sunshine indiscriminately.

He courted her openly, not indelicately, but with a happy air of respect
and self-assurance.

Henry sat, sick with jealousy, and tried to work and watch; but he could
only watch: his hand trembled too much to work.

What may be called oblique flattery is very pleasing to those
quick-witted girls, who have had a surfeit of direct compliments: and it
is oblique flattery, when a man is supercilious and distant to others,
as well as tender and a little obsequious to her he would please.

Grace Carden enjoyed this oblique flattery of Mr. Coventry's all the
more that it came to her just at a moment when her companions seemed
disposed to ignore her. She rewarded Mr. Coventry accordingly, and made
Henry Little's heart die within him. His agony became intolerable. What
a position was his! Set there, with a chisel in his hand, to copy the
woman he loved, while another wooed her before his face, and she smiled
at his wooing!

At last his chisel fell out of his hand, and startled everybody: and
then he rose up with pale cheek, and glittering eyes, and Heaven only
knows what he was going to do or say. But at that moment another visitor
was announced, to whom indeed the door was never closed. He entered the
next moment, and Grace ran to meet him, crying, "Oh, Mr. Raby! this IS a
surprise."

Mr. Raby kissed her, and shook hands with Mr. Coventry. He then said
a kind word to Jael Dence, who got up and courtesied to him. He cast
a careless glance on Henry and the bust, but said nothing. He was in a
hurry, and soon came to the object of his visit.

"My dear," said he, "the last time I saw you, you said you were sorry
that Christmas was no longer kept in Hillsborough as it used to be."

"And so I am."

"Well, it is kept in Cairnhope, thank Heaven, pretty much as it was
three centuries ago. Your father will be in London, I hear; will you
honor my place and me with a visit during the Christmas holidays?"

Grace opened her eyes with aston