rish voice, as if he had lived
upon nothing but the recollection of it ever since.

It was idiosyncratic of Lord Mallow that he could not talk to any young
woman without seeming to adore her. At this very moment he thought
Violet Tempest the one lovable and soul-entrancing woman the world held
for him; yet at sight of Lady Mabel he behaved as if she and no other
was his one particular star.

"It was a nice dance, wasn't it? but there were too many people for the
rooms," said Lady Mabel easily; "and I don't think the flowers were so
prettily arranged as the year before. Do you?"

"I was not there the year before."

"No? I must confess to having been at three balls at Lady Dumdrum's.
That makes me seem very old, does it not? Some young ladies in London
make believe to be always in their first season. They put on a
hoydenish freshness, and pretend to be delighted with everything, as if
they were just out of the nursery."

"That's a very good idea up to thirty," said Lord Mallow. "I should
think it would hardly answer after."

"Oh, after thirty they begin to be fond of horses and take to betting.
I believe young ladies after thirty are the most desperate--what is
that dreadful slang word?--plungers in society. How do you like our
hunting?"

"I like riding about the Forest amazingly; but I should hardly call it
hunting, after Leicestershire. Of course that depends in a measure upon
what you mean by hunting. If you only mean hounds pottering about after
a fox, this might pass muster; but if your idea of hunting includes
hard riding and five-barred gates, I should call the kind of thing you
do here by another name."

"Was my cousin, Mr. Vawdrey, out to-day?"

"The M. F. H.? In the first flight. May I get you some tea?"

"If you please. Mrs. Winstanley's tea is always so good."

Mrs. Winstanley was supremely happy in officiating at her gipsy table,
where the silver tea-kettle of Queen Anne's time was going through its
usual sputtering performances. To sit in a fashionable gown--however
difficult the gown might be to sit in--and dispense tea to a local
duchess, was Mrs. Winstanley's loftiest idea of earthly happiness. Of
course there might be a superior kind of happiness beyond earth; but to
appreciate that the weak human soul would have to go through a
troublesome ordeal in the way of preparation, as the gray cloth at
Hoyle's printing-works is dashed about in gigantic vats, and whirled
round upon mighty wheels, be