eaving the drawing-room.

The object was too remarkable to escape notice, and Olivia's face grew
scarlet as she thought of her triumph.

Miss Kennyfeck saw this, but attributed the agitation to anything but
its true cause.

"I 'm in search of mamma," said she, and with a very peculiar glance at
Olivia, left the room.

Sir Harvey's visit lasted full twenty minutes longer; and although no
record has been preserved of what passed on the occasion, they who met
him descending the stairs all agreed in describing his appearance as
most gloomy and despondent. As for Olivia, she saw the door close after
him with a something very like sorrow. There was no love in the case,
nor anything within a day's journey of it; but he was good-looking,
fashionable, well-mannered, and mustachioed. She would have been "my
lady," too; and though this is but a "brevet nobility" after all, it has
all "the sound of the true metal." She thought over all these things;
and she thought, besides, how very sad he looked when she said "No;"
and, how much sadder, when asked the usual question about "time, and
proved devotion, and all that sort of thing," she said "No," again; and
how, saddest of all, when she made the stereotyped little speech about
"sisterly affection, and seeing him happy with another!" Oh dear! oh
dear! is it not very wearisome and depressing to think that chess can
have some hundred thousand combinations, and love-making but its two or
three "gambits,"--the "fool's-mate" the chief of them? We have said she
was sorry for what had occurred; but she consoled herself by remembering
it was not her fault that Sir Harvey was not as rich as Cashel, and
nephew to a live uncle!

As Sir Harvey's "lady"--Heaven forgive me, I had almost written
"wife"--she would have been the envy of a very large circle of her
Dublin acquaintance; and then she knew that these dragoon people have a
way of making their money go so much further than civilians; and in all
that regards horses, equipage, and outward show, the smartest "mufti"
is a seedy affair beside the frogs of the new regulation pelisse! She
actually began to feel misgivings about her choice. A high drag at the
Howth races, a crowd of whiskered fellows of "ours," and the band of the
regiment in Merrion Square, came home to her "dear Dublin" imagination
with irresistible fascination. In her mind's eye, she had already cut
the "bar," and been coldly distant with the infantry. It was a little
rever