ring dismay.

'You'll hear all about it when my father has told Aunt Kitty,' said
Louis. 'Clara,'--he paused, and spoke lower--'tell her I see what is
right now; tell her to--to pray for me, that I may not be talked into
tampering with my conscience or with hers. Don't let it dwell on you
or on my aunt,' he added, cheerfully. 'No, it won't; you will be
thinking of Jem and Isabel.' And as his father came up, his last words
were, in his own bright tone, 'Tell granny from me that giraffes ought
always to be seen by gaslight.'

Clara's countenance returned him a look of sorrowful reproach, for
thinking her capable of being amused when he was in distress; and she
sat in silent musings all the way home--pondering over his words,
speculating on his future, wondering what Mary felt, and becoming blunt
and almost angry, when her grave escort in the opposite corner
consulted civility by addressing some indifferent remark to her, as if,
she said to herself, 'she were no better than a stuffed giraffe, and
knew and cared nothing about anybody!'

He might have guessed that she understood something by the sudden way
in which she curtailed her grandmother's rapturous and affectionate
inquiries about the wedding, ran upstairs on the plea of taking off her
bonnet, and appeared no more till he had gone home; when, coming down,
she found granny, with tearful eyes, lamenting that Mr. Ponsonby was so
harsh and unkind, and fully possessed with the rational view which her
nephew had been impressing on her.

'Ha!' said Clara, 'that is what Louis meant. I'll tell you what,
granny, Lord Ormersfield never knew in his life what was right, half as
well as Louis does. I wish he would let him alone. If Mary is good
enough for him, she will go out and wait till her father comes round.
If she is not, she won't; and Lord Ormersfield has no business to tease
her.'

'Then you would like her to go out?' said Mrs. Frost.

'I like anything that makes Louis happy. I thought it would have been
delightful to have him married--one could be so much more at
Ormersfield, and Mary would be so nice; but as to their being
over-persuaded, and thinking themselves half wrong! why, they would
never be happy in their lives; and Louis would be always half-asleep or
half mad, to save himself the trouble of thinking. But he'll never do
it!'

On the Saturday morning Mary's healthy and vigorous spirit had quite
resumed its tone. The worst was over when she had