nto impatience and anger; he was
doubly displeased with himself and with Lucia. Yet, as he thought of her
his mood softened; she was only a child, and would be good to-morrow.
But then she could not always be a child--a girl of sixteen ought to be
beginning to be reasonable; and then she did not look such a child. He
had been struck by that idea at one particular moment of this very
evening. It was when he had returned to the ball-room at the close of
the first quadrille, and had met Lucia walking up the room with Mr.
Percy. They had been talking together with animation; Lucia was a little
flushed, and looking more lovely than usual. Mr. Percy, for his part,
appeared to have forgotten his cool, almost supercilious manner, and to
be occupied more with her than with himself.

Maurice felt his cheek grow red as he recalled the picture. He moved
impatiently, and in doing so, displaced some loose papers, which slipped
to the ground. In stooping to gather them up, his hand touched a dead
flower, which had fallen with them. It was Lucia's rose. He was just
about to throw it down again, when his hand stopped. "She spoke of
something different," he muttered; "are the old times coming to an end,
I wonder? Times _must_ change, I suppose." He sighed, and instead of
throwing the rose away, he slipped it into an envelope and locked it
into his desk.

CHAPTER III.

The Honourable Edward Percy was the younger son of the Earl of
Lastingham, and might therefore be readily excused if he considered
himself a person of some importance in a country where a baronetcy is
the highest hereditary dignity, and where many of the existing
"honourables" began life as country storekeepers or schoolmasters. It is
true that in his own proper orbit, this luminary appeared but a star of
small magnitude, his handsome person and agreeable qualities making
slight compensation for a want of fortune which he had always considered
a special hardship in his own case; regarding himself as admirably
fitted by nature for spending money, and knowing by experience that his
abilities were totally inadequate to saving it. His family was not rich;
so far from it, indeed, that the great object of the Earl had been to
marry his daughters like Harpagon's "sans dot," a task which was not yet
satisfactorily accomplished; and all he had been able to do for his
younger son, had been to use the very small political influence he
possessed, to start him in life as an _