ur.

"Oh, no! that will never do, dear Adriana; they will say we are
purse-proud."

"I am afraid they will always say that, mamma," and she sighed.

"It is a long time since we all separated," said Endymion to Adriana.

"Months! Mr. Sidney Wilton said you were the first runaway. I think you
were quite right. Your new life now will be fresh to you. If you
had remained, it would only have been associated with defeat and
discomfiture."

"I am so happy to be in parliament, that I do not think I could ever
associate such a life with discomfiture."

"Does it make you very happy?" said Adriana, looking at him rather
earnestly.

"Very happy."

"I am glad of that."

The Neuchatels had a house at Paris--one of the fine hotels of the First
Empire. It was inhabited generally by one of the nephews, but it was
always ready to receive them with every luxury and every comfort. But
Mrs. Neuchatel herself particularly disliked Paris, and she rarely
accompanied her husband in his frequent but brief visits to the gay
city. She had yielded on this occasion to the wish of Adriana, whom
she had endeavoured to bring up in a wholesome prejudice against French
taste and fashions.

The dinner to-day was exquisite, in a chamber of many-coloured marbles,
and where there was no marble there was gold, and when the banquet was
over, they repaired to saloons hung with satin of a delicate tint which
exhibited to perfection a choice collection of Greuse and Vanloo. Mr.
Sidney Wilton dined there as well as the Count of Ferroll, some of the
French ministers, and two or three illustrious Orleanist celebrities of
literature, who acknowledged and emulated the matchless conversational
powers of Mrs. Neuchatel. Lord and Lady Beaumaris and Mrs. Rodney
completed the party.

Sylvia was really peerless. She was by birth half a Frenchwoman, and
she compensated for her deficiency in the other moiety, by a series of
exquisite costumes, in which she mingled with the spell-born fashion of
France her own singular genius in dress. She spoke not much, but looked
prettier than ever; a little haughty, and now and then faintly smiling.
What was most remarkable about her was her convenient and complete
want of memory. Sylvia had no past. She could not have found her way to
Warwick Street to save her life. She conversed with Endymion with ease
and not without gratification, but from all she said, you might have
supposed that they had been born in the same sphere,