r a smile, and a little respite, the young woman proceeded in her
narration of her friend's history.

"'I was willing enough to listen,' Ethel said, 'to grandmamma then: for
we are glad of an excuse to do what we like; and I liked admiration, and
rank, and great wealth, Laura; and Lord Farintosh offered me these. I
liked to surpass my companions, and I saw them so eager in pursuing
him! You cannot think, Laura, what meannesses women in the world will
commit--mothers and daughters too, in the pursuit of a person of
his great rank. Those Miss Burrs, you should have seen them at the
country-houses where we visited together, and how they followed him; how
they would meet him in the parks and shrubberies; how they liked smoking
though I knew it made them ill; how they were always finding pretexts
for getting near him! Oh, it was odious!'"

I would not willingly interrupt the narrative, but let the reporter be
allowed here to state that at this point of Miss Newcome's story (which
my wife gave with a very pretty imitation of the girl's manner), we both
burst out laughing so loud that little Madame de Moncontour put her head
into the drawing-room and asked what we was a-laughing at? We did not
tell our hostess that poor Ethel and her grandmother had been accused
of doing the very same thing for which she found fault with the Misses
Burr. Miss Newcome thought herself quite innocent, or how should she
have cried out at the naughty behaviour of other people?

"'Wherever we went, however,' resumed my wife's young penitent, 'it was
easy to see, I think I may say so without vanity, who was the object of
Lord Farintosh's attention. He followed us everywhere; and we could not
go upon any visit in England or Scotland but he was in the same house.
Grandmamma's whole heart was bent upon that marriage, and when he
proposed for me I do not disown that I was very pleased and vain.

"'It is in these last months that I have heard about him more, and
learned to know him better--him and myself too, Laura. Some one--some
one you know, and whom I shall always love as a brother--reproached me
in former days for a worldliness about which you talk too sometimes. But
it is not worldly to give yourself up for your family, is it? One cannot
help the rank in which one is born, and surely it is but natural and
proper to marry in it. Not that Lord Farintosh thinks me or any one of
his rank.' (Here Miss Ethel laughed.) 'He is the Sultan, and we, every
u