y saw it in the very first instant
we entered their drawing-room three weeks ago."

"Indeed, and how?" asked Clive.

"By--by the way she looked at him," said little Rosey.

CHAPTER XLV. A Stag of Ten

The London season was very nearly come to an end, and Lord Farintosh had
danced I don't know how many times with Miss Newcome, had drunk several
bottles of the old Kew port, had been seen at numerous breakfasts,
operas, races, and public places by the young lady's side, and had
not as yet made any such proposal as Lady Kew expected for her
granddaughter. Clive going to see his military friends in the Regent's
Park once, and finish Captain Butts's portrait in barracks, heard two or
three young men talking, and one say to another, "I bet you three to two
Farintosh don't marry her, and I bet you even that he don't ask
her." Then as he entered Mr. Butts's room, where these gentlemen were
conversing, there was a silence and an awkwardness. The young fellows
were making an "event" out of Ethel's marriage, and sporting their money
freely on it.

To have an old countess hunting a young marquis so resolutely that all
the world should be able to look on and speculate whether her game would
be run down by that staunch toothless old pursuer--that is an amusing
sport, isn't it? and affords plenty of fun and satisfaction to those who
follow the hunt. But for a heroine of a story, be she ever so clever,
handsome, and sarcastic, I don't think for my part, at this present
stage of the tale, Miss Ethel Newcome occupies a very dignified
position. To break her heart in silence for Tomkins who is in love with
another; to suffer no end of poverty, starvation, capture by ruffians,
ill-treatment by a bullying husband, loss of beauty by the small-pox,
death even at the end of the volume; all these mishaps a young heroine
must endure (and has endured in romances over and over again), without
losing the least dignity, or suffering any diminution of the sentimental
reader's esteem. But a girl of great beauty, high temper, and strong
natural intellect, who submits to be dragged hither and thither in an
old grandmother's leash, and in pursuit of a husband who will run away
from the couple, such a person, I say, is in a very awkward position as
a heroine; and I declare if I had another ready to my hand (and unless
there were extenuating circumstances) Ethel should be deposed at this
very sentence.

But a novelist must go on with his heroi