ons in a woman
of her beauty, youth and accomplishments, may excite surprise; but where
the mind is left uncultivated by the hand of care, the soul untouched by
the love of goodness, the human heart seldom fails to set up an idol of
its own to worship. In the Countess of Pendennyss this idol was pride.

The remainder of the ladies, from ceasing to wonder at the manners of
Francis, had made them the subject of their mirth; and nettled at his
apparent indifference to their society, which they erroneously attributed
to his sense of his importance, they overstepped the bounds of
good-breeding in manifesting their displeasure.

"Mr. Denbigh," cried one of the most thoughtless and pretty of the gay
tribe to him one day, as Francis sat in a corner abstracted from the scene
around him, "when do you mean to favor the world with your brilliant ideas
in the shape of a book?"

"Oh! no doubt soon," said a second; "and I expect they will be homilies,
or another volume to the Whole Duty of Man."

"Rather," cried a third, with bitter irony, "another canto to the Rape of
the Lock, his ideas are so vivid and full of imagery."

"Or, what do you think," said a fourth, speaking in a voice of harmony,
and tones of the most soothing tenderness, "of pity and compassion, for
the follies of those inferior minds, who cannot enjoy the reflections of a
good sense and modesty peculiarly his own?"

This might also be irony; and Francis thought it so; but the tones were so
soft and conciliating, that with a face pale with his emotions, he
ventured to look up and met the eye of Marian, fixed on him in an
expression that changed his death-like hue into the color of vermillion.

He thought of this speech; he reasoned on it; he dreamt on it. But for the
looks which accompanied it, like the rest of the party, he would have
thought it the cruellest cut of them all. But that look, those eyes, that
voice, what a commentary on her language did they not afford!

Francis was not long in suspense; the next morning an excursion was
proposed, which included all but himself in its arrangements. He was
either too reserved or too proud to offer services which were not
required.

Several gentlemen had contended for the honor of driving the countess in a
beautiful phaeton of her own. They grew earnest in their claims: one had
been promised by its mistress with an opportunity of trying the ease of
the carriage; another was delighted with the excellent training o