I only got your letter a month ago. You never answered the second I
wrote you from Rome. Your letter lay there at the post ever so long, and
was forwarded to me at Naples."

"Where?" asked Ethel.

"I saw Lord Kew there." Ethel was smiling with all her might, and
kissing her hand to the twins, who passed at that moment with their
mamma. "Oh, indeed, you saw--how do you do?--Lord Kew."

"And, having seen him, I came over to England," said Clive.

Ethel looked at him, gravely. "What am I to understand by that,
Clive?--You came over because it was very hot at Naples, and because you
wanted to see your friends here, n'est-ce pas? How glad mamma was to see
you! You know she loves you as if you were her own son."

"What, as much as that angel, Barnes!" cries Clive, bitterly;
"impossible."

Ethel looked once more. Her present mood and desire was to treat Clive
as a chit, as a young fellow without consequence--a thirteenth younger
brother. But in his looks and behaviour there was that which seemed to
say not too many liberties were to be taken with him.

"Why weren't you here a month sooner, and you might have seen the
marriage? It was a very pretty thing. Everybody was there. Clara, and so
did Barnes really, looked quite handsome."

"It must have been beautiful," continued Clive; "quite a touching sight,
I am sure. Poor Charles Belsize could not be present because his brother
was dead; and----"

"And what else, pray, Mr. Newcome!" cries Miss, in great wrath, her pink
nostrils beginning to quiver. "I did not think, really, that when we
met after so many months, I was to be insulted; yes, insulted, by the
mention of that name."

"I most humbly ask pardon," said Clive, with a grave bow. "Heaven forbid
that I should wound your sensibility, Ethel! It is, as you say, my first
appearance in society. I talk about things or persons that I should
not mention. I should talk about buttons, should I? which you were good
enough to tell me was the proper subject of conversation. Mayn't I even
speak of connexions of the family? Mr. Belsize, through this marriage,
has the honour of being connected with you; and even I, in a remote
degree, may boast of a sort of an ever--so--distant cousinship with him.
What an honour for me!"

"Pray, what is the meaning of all this?" cries Miss Ethel, surprised,
and perhaps alarmed. Indeed, Clive scarcely knew. He had been chafing
all the while he talked with her; smothering anger as he saw the you