tone. 'She may not be quite what you'd call good style-'

'I know very little of good or bad style,' interrupted Elizabeth, in a somewhat contemptuous tone; 'your world is so new to me. But certainly Mrs. Cinqmars has hardly what that French secretary of legation I went in to dinner with the other night called l'air du faubourg.'

'Well, no, perhaps not; dresses a little too much, and indulges rather too freely in slang, perhaps. But she's the most kind-hearted creature in the world; gives the best parties out-not your highand-mighty nine-o'clock dinners, with cabinet ministers and ambassadors and foreign princelings, and so forth, but carpet dances, and acting charades, and impromptu suppers, and water parties. You go to her house to amuse yourself, in short, and not to do the civil to a lot of elderly fogies with orders at their button-holes, or to talk politics with some heavy swell whose name is always cropping up in the Times leaders.'

'Who is Mr. Cinqmars ?' inquired Elizabeth with a supercilious air.

'Henri du Châtelet de Cinqmars. Born a Belgian, of a French-Canadian father and an English mother -that's his nationality. Made his money upon vari

ous stock exchanges, and continues so to make it, only extending his operations now and then by buying up a steamboat line, or something in that way. A man who will burst up some of these days, no doubt, and pay ninepence or so in the pound; but in the mean time he lives very decently at the rate of twenty thousand a year. He has literary proclivities, too, and is editor and proprietor of the Ring, a weekly paper in the sporting and theatrical interests, with a mild flavour of the Age and the Satirist, which you may or may not have seen.'

'I never look at newspapers,' said Elizabeth; 'but pray why are you so anxious that I should like your Mrs. du Châtelet de Cinqmars?' she asked, · lowering her fan and gratifying the Viscount with an inquiring gaze from her brilliant eyes, more than ever brilliant since she had drunk the sparkling cup of London pleasures.

'Because she's the nicest person you could possibly have for a chaperon. Ah, of course, I know,' answering her glance in the direction of the busy letter-writer, whose substantial form was visible in the distance; 'your aunt is a plucky old party, and can stand a good deal of knocking about for a veteran, but I think she'd knock under if she tried Mrs. Cinqmars' work: that blessed little woman shows up at

every race in Great Britain-from Pontefract to the Curragh-and at every regatta; and in the autumn you find her at Hombourg or Baden, gambling like old boots. Now, if you would only put yourself under her wing,' concluded Lord Paulyn persuasively, you'd stand some chance of seeing life.'

" Thank you very much; but I think I have seen enough in the last five weeks to last me for the remainder of my existence. Mrs. Cinqmars is a most good-natured person, no doubt; she called me "my dear" half an hour after I'd been introduced to her; and I won't be so rude as to say that she's not good style; but she's not my style, and I shouldn't care about knowing her more intimately. Besides, papa wants me at home, and I am really anxious to go back.'

She smiled to herself with a pensive smile; thinking what reason she had for this anxiety; thinking of the quiet country town, the gray old Norman church, with its wide aisles and ponderous square tower-the church along whose bare arched roof Malcolm Forde's deep voice echoed resonantly; thinking of that widely-different life, with its sluggish calm, and that it would be very sweet to go back to it, now that life at Hawleigh meant happy triumphant love, and Malcolm for her bond-slave.

But, in the mean time, this other and more mundane existence, with its picture-galleries, and gardens botanical or horticultural putting forth their first floral efforts, its dinners and déjeuners and kettledrums and carpet dances, was something more than tolerable to the soul of Elizabeth. She had made a success in her aunt's circle, which was by no means a narrow one, and had received adulation enough to turn a stronger brain; had found the cup of pleasure filled to overflowing, and new worshippers everywhere she appeared. Had Mrs. Chevenix been a step or two higher on the nicely-graduated platform of society, Miss Luttrell might have been the belle of the season; as it was, people talked of her as the beautiful Miss Luttrell, a country clergyman's daughter, a mere nobody, but a nobody whom it was a solecism not to have met.

She accepted this homage with an air of calm indifference, something bordering even upon arrogance or superciliousness, which told well for her; but in her secret soul she absorbed the praises of mankind greedily.

She showed herself an adept in the art of flirtation, and had given so much apparent encouragement to Lord Paulyn, that, although she had been only five weeks in town, her engagement to that young

nobleman was already an established fact in the minds of people who had seen them together. But she was not the less constant to her absent lover; not the less eager for his brief but earnest letters. She looked forward to her future without a pang of regret with rapturous anticipation, rather, of a little heaven upon earth with the man she adored. But she thought at the same time that her chosen husband was a peculiarly privileged being, and that he had need to rejoice with a measureless joy in having won so rare a prize.

'If he could see the attention I receive here, he might think it almost strange that I should love him better than all the rest of the world,' she said to herself.

'Going back to Hawleigh!' cried Lord Paulyn. aghast. Why, you mustn't dream of such a thing till after the Goodwood week! I have set my heart on showing you Goodwood.'

6

What is Goodwood?' asked Elizabeth, thinking it might be some new kind of game-an improve

ment upon croquet perhaps; and when is the Goodwood week?'

'Towards the end of July.'

'In July; that would never do. I must go home in a fortnight at the latest.'