d, deliberately followed by her train. "Corrie has too
many admirers to make up her mind speedily, yet she takes it all very
quietly. But this is so appropriate--Mr. Spottiswoode's cousin and my
cousin--nobody could have planned it better."

She turned round, and heard a blunt booby of a farmer speaking out his
mind. She at once took him up--"You would not have thought it? You
cannot comprehend what has come over Bourhope, or what he sees in that
thin, yellow mite, Miss Hunter of Blackfaulds, even though she were as
good as a saint, and as wise as the Queen of Sheba? Oh! come, Balquin,
you do not allow sufficient latitude to goodness and cleverness. I tell
you, Bourhope has neither eyes nor ears for anybody but that mite; he
counts his colourless daisy far before the gayest painted face. He knows
that we are remarking on them now, and he is holding his head as high as
if he had sought and won a queen. He is right; she will prove a
sensible, cheerful wife to him. Bourhope will have the cleverest, best
wife in the county, for all your swaggering. And that is something, when
a man comes to be old and has an old wife like me. Not old, Balquin?
away with you. I wish the Provost heard you. Do you think to flatter me
because I am in spirits about my cousin's match? No, it is not lost that
a friend gets, Balquin."

The public of Priorton did not know whether most to admire Mrs.
Spottiswoode's diplomacy, or this rare instance of poetic justice.

DIANA.

I.--AN UNDERTAKING.

"He will not last ten years' time, Die; and then you will be rich and
independent--the lady of Ashpound."

"Don't mention it, sir, unless you mean to tempt me to commit murder
next."

The speakers in the old drawing-room of Newton-le-Moor, in the south
country, thirty years ago, were Mr. Baring and his daughter Diana. He
was a worn and dissipated-looking man, with a half-arrogant, half-base
air--implying a whole old man of the world of a bad day gone by. He was
flawless in his carving, his card-dealing, his frock-coat and tie:
corrupt to the core in almost everything else. She was a tall,
full-formed woman, in her flower and prime, with a fine carriage and
gait, which rendered it a matter of indifference that she wore as plain
and simple a muslin gown as a lady could wear. Her hair was of the pale,
delicate, neutral tint which the French call _blond-cendre_, a little
too ashen-hued for most complexions. It was not wavy hair, but very soft
and