ge at that end, in front of the pillars," he
remarked, nodding at a wooden erection. "Quite right. I could not have
placed it better myself. What, Brown? Sir George is in the drawing-room,
is he? and tea, as I perceive, is going in at this moment. Come, Colonel
Middleton." And we followed the butler to the drawing-room.

I am not a person who easily becomes confused, but I must own I did get
confused with the large party into the midst of which we were now
ushered. I soon made out Sir George Danvers, a delicate, but
irascible-looking old gentleman, who received me with dignified
cordiality, but returned Charles's greeting with a certain formality and
coldness which I was pained to see, family affection being, in my
opinion, the chief blessing of a truly happy home. Charles I already
knew, and with the second son, Ralph, a ruddy, smiling young man with
any amount of white teeth, I had no difficulty; but after that I became
hopelessly involved. I was introduced to an elderly lady whom I
addressed for the rest of the evening as Lady Danvers, until Charles
casually mentioned that his mother was dead, and that, until the
Deceased Wife's Sister Bill was passed, he did not anticipate that his
aunt Mary would take upon herself the position of step-mother to her
orphaned nephews. The severe elderly lady, then, who beamed so sweetly
upon Ralph, and regarded Charles with such manifest coldness, was their
aunt Lady Mary Cunningham. She had known Sir John slightly in her youth,
she said, as she graciously made room for me on her sofa, and she
expressed a very proper degree of regret at his sudden death,
considering that he had not been a personal friend in any way.

"We all have our faults, Colonel Middleton," said Lady Mary, with a
gentle sigh, which dislodged a little colony of crumbs from the front of
her dress. "Sir John, like the rest of us, was not exempt, though I have
no doubt the softening influence of age would have done much, since I
knew him, to smooth acerbities of character which were unfortunately
strongly marked in his early life."

She had evidently not known Sir John in his later years.

As she continued to talk in this strain I endeavored to make out which
of the young ladies present was the one to whom Ralph was engaged. I was
undecided as to which it was of the two to whom I had already been
introduced. Girls always seem to me so very much alike, especially
pretty girls; and these were both of them pretty. I