ng
his moustaches thoughtfully for some minutes, he said at last, as if
with an effort, "You are right, young one, and yet----"

If I was right, what need was there for him to throw such passion into
his part--what need was there for him to say with such _empressement_
those words:

A willing pupil kneels to thee,
And lays his title and his fortune at thy feet?

If he intended to go into foreign service, why did he not go at once?
Though I confess it seemed strange to me why Fane--the courted, the
flattered, the admired Fane--should wish to leave England.

Reader, mind, the gallant captain is a desperate flirt, and I do not
believe he will go into foreign service any more than I shall, but I
_am_ afraid he will win that poor girl's heart with far less thought
than you buy your last "little darling French bonnet," and when he is
tired of it will throw it away with quite as little heed. But I was not
so much interested in his flirtation as to forget my own, still I was
obliged to confess that Mary Aspeden did not pay me as much attention as
I should have wished.

I danced the first dance with her, after the play was over--(I forgot to
tell you we were very much applauded)--and Tom Cleaveland engaging her
for the next, I proposed a walk through the conservatories to a
sentimental young lady who was my peculiar aversion, but to whom I
became extremely _devoue_, for I thought I would try and pique Mary if I
could.

The light strains of dance music floated in from the distance, and the
air was laden with the scent of flowers, and many a _tete-a-tete_ and
_partie carree_ was arranged in that commodious conservatory.

Half hidden by an orange-tree, Florence Aspeden was leaning back in a
garden-chair, close to where we stood looking out upon the beautiful
night. Her fair face was flushed, and she was nervously picking some of
the blossoms to pieces; before her stood Mounteagle, speaking eagerly. I
was moving away to avoid being a hearer of his love-speech, as I doubted
not it was, but my companion, with many young-ladyish expressions of
adoration of the "sublime moonlight," begged me to stay "one moment,
that she might see the dear moon emerge like a swan from that dark,
beautiful cloud!" and in the pauses of her ecstatics I heard poor
Mount's voice in a tone of intense entreaty.

At that moment Fane passed. He glanced at the group behind the
orange-trees, and his face grew stern and cold, and his lips