marked significance in her look and tone; and with the very contradictory charges brought against the absent wife by Mr. de Burgh fresh in her memory, she would, if she had deemed it smiling matter, have been inclined to smile to see the table thus turned upon him.

Perhaps her cousin was not himself quite unimpressed or unconvicted in his conscience by the unconscious retort, for colouring slightly, and for the first time directly addressing his wife since her entrance, though he had entered into some conversation with the gentleman. by his side, he said with a not ill-natured, though somewhat provoking laugh, which nevertheless displayed to great advantage his set of ivory teeth.

"Well, Olivia, pray, the next time let your unselfish consideration," with a stress on the latter words, "be a little more considerately timed. To keep a tired guest waiting for her dinner till nearly nine o'clock-for you knew as well as I did, that she was sure to

arrive before seven-whilst you are scouring the country in search of people to say pretty things to her on the morrow, is a specimen of attentive consideration, which at least was not dreamt of before in my philosophy."

"No of course not," was the contemptuous reply, "though perhaps Mary Seaham may see the circumstance in a different light, supposing that dinner, as she is a reasonable being, is not quite so important and paramount a point in her existence as in yours. But why you waited for me I cannot tell. You are not usually so painfully polite. I suppose you wanted to show off to the utmost, the great inconsideration which marks my conduct towards yourself and others, and the excessive consideration of your own."

How distressing and astounding all this was to Mary's feelings may be imagined, more especially from being herself made so prominent an object in the debate.

In the first agitation of the meeting, what with the grateful and gratified surprise which

the unexpected warmth of her reception had inspired, and subsequently her attention and interest being so much absorbed by her newly arrived cousin, on whose unchanged beauty she could not refrain from dwelling in unfeigned admiration her opposite neighbour who sat with his back to the now declining light had almost entirely escaped her notice; but now, as with downcast eyes and flushing cheeks, she sat listening in painful embarrassment to this conjugal tirade, it occurred to her to lift a timid glance to discern how her fellow-sufferer bore the infliction to which they were mutually exposed. She raised her eyes, therefore, and having done so, that very timid glance was rivetted, and became gradually changed into a gaze of earnest, calm surprise, for as she gazed the indistinctness of the vision seemed to clear away, and the face of him whose kindness had been once so strongly impressed upon her girlish fancy to be revealed to her astonished sight.

The same dark eyes fixed with interest upon

her changeful countenance, that very same peculiar smile which he had turned towards her, when they were left standing alone together on the occasion of her second cavalier abandonment, by the self-absorbed lovers-seemed to mark his observation of the discomfiture which the startling contrast now exhibited had caused her. A smile-such as moves one to look again, and observe with curious interest the countenance from whence it emanates-in much the same way as one would look upon a book of strange characters, whose mystic language we feel certain could we but read it aright, would unto us a tale unfold of more than common import.

But, setting aside the interest which this unexpected recognition inspired-the encouragement that smile, as on the former occasion just mentioned, tended to convey - Mary Seaham felt-considering the many secret thoughts and feelings which in her idle moments she had once wasted on this-the

almost, it might be said, ideal hero of her imagination wonderfully little affected by the fact of his real substantial embodiment--not more so perhaps, than one might be who awakens from a series of fanciful dreams to see the object who has played therein the most fantastic and highly coloured part, standing, divested of all supernatural and exaggerated characteristics, before his eyes; and with a smile, almost as quiet and confiding as the one with which she had yielded herself to his guidance six years before in the grounds of Morland, she had acknowledged the recognition, ere Mrs. de Burgh, after an angry pause and a killing glance across the table-provoked by her husband's mortifying contradiction of her assertion respecting the knowledge she had entertained of the hour of her guest's arrival (a glance which was probably intended to convey to his conviction how extremely odious an individual she deemed him)-recovered sufficiently to proceed with her relation in the same lively strain.