o fetch the ladder, to gather the sprays on the top
of the wall.'

'Do you see your bit of myrtle, Guy,' said Amy, pointing to it, on
Laura's head, 'that you tried to persuade me would pass for jessamine?'

'Ah! it should have been all myrtle,' said Guy.

Philip leant meantime against the door. Laura only once glanced towards
him, thinking all this too trifling for him, and never imagining the
intense interest with which he gave a meaning to each word and look.

'Well done, Mary!' cried Charles, 'they have furbished you up
handsomely.'

Mary made a face, and said she should wonder who was the fashionable
young lady she should meet in the pier-glasses at Allonby. Then Mr.
Edmonstone hurried them away, and they arrived in due time.

The saloon at Allonby was a beautiful room, one end opening into a
conservatory, full of coloured lamps, fresh green leaves, and hot-house
plants. There they found as yet only the home party, the good-natured,
merry Lord Kilcoran, his quiet English wife, who had bad health, and
looked hardly equal to the confusion of the evening; Maurice, and two
younger boys; Eveleen, and her two little sisters, Mabel and Helen.

'This makes it hard on Charlotte,' thought Amy, while the two girls
dragged her off to show her the lamps in the conservatory; and the rest
attacked Mrs. Edmonstone for not having brought Charlotte, reproaching
her with hardness of heart of which they had never believed her
capable--Lady Eveleen, in especial, talking with that exaggeration of
her ordinary manner which her dread of Captain Morville made her assume.
Little he recked of her; he was absorbed in observing how far Laura's
conduct coincided with Charles's hints. On the first opportunity, he
asked her to dance, and was satisfied with her pleased acquiescence;
but the next moment Guy came up, and in an eager manner made the same
request.

'I am engaged,' said she, with a bright, proud glance at Philip; and Guy
pursued Amabel into the conservatory, where he met with better success.
Mr. Edmonstone gallantly asked Mary if he was too old a partner, and was
soon dancing with the step and spring that had once made him the best
dancer in the county.

Mrs. Edmonstone watched her flock, proud and pleased, thinking how well
they looked and that, in especial, she had never been sensible how much
Laura's and Philip's good looks excelled the rest of the world. They
were much alike in the remarkable symmetry both of figure and fe