ad in truth paid her the compliment of falling in love with her,
and this is a compliment to which few girls are indifferent. Nora
might perhaps have tried to fall in love with Mr. Glascock, had she
not been forced to make comparisons between him and another. This
other one had not fallen in love with her, as she well knew; and she
certainly had not fallen in love with him. But still, the comparison
was forced upon her, and it did not result in favour of Mr. Glascock.
On the present occasion Mr. Glascock as he sat next to her almost
proposed to her.

"You have never seen Monkhams?" he said. Monkhams was his father's
seat, a very grand place in Worcestershire. Of course he knew very
well that she had never seen Monkhams. How should she have seen it?

"I have never been in that part of England at all," she replied.

"I should so like to show you Monkhams. The oaks there are the finest
in the kingdom. Do you like oaks?"

"Who does not like oaks? But we have none in the islands, and nobody
has ever seen so few as I have."

"I'll show you Monkhams some day. Shall I? Indeed, I hope that some
day I may really show you Monkhams."

Now when an unmarried man talks to a young lady of really showing her
the house in which it will be his destiny to live, he can hardly mean
other than to invite her to live there with him. It must at least be
his purpose to signify that, if duly encouraged, he will so invite
her. But Nora Rowley did not give Mr. Glascock much encouragement on
this occasion.

"I'm afraid it is not likely that anything will ever take me into
that part of the country," she said. There was something perhaps in
her tone which checked Mr. Glascock, so that he did not then press
the invitation.

When the ladies were up-stairs in the drawing-room, Lady Milborough
contrived to seat herself on a couch intended for two persons only,
close to Mrs. Trevelyan. Emily, thinking that she might perhaps hear
some advice about Guinness's stout, prepared herself to be saucy. But
the matter in hand was graver than that. Lady Milborough's mind was
uneasy about Colonel Osborne.

"My dear," said she, "was not your father very intimate with that
Colonel Osborne?"

"He is very intimate with him, Lady Milborough."

"Ah, yes; I thought I had heard so. That makes it of course natural
that you should know him."

"We have known him all our lives," said Emily, forgetting probably
that out of the twenty-three years and some months whic