Park, and asked me on what day I meant to shoot myself."

How very severe!" said Agnes, laughing. "Do tell me your friend's name, that I may know whom I ought to be afraid of."

"Nay, that is too good, upon my honour," said Lord Midhurst: "he ought to be afraid of you. You know you can be very severe. You ladies always beat us men in that. But I like people to be severe. I wish you had stayed in town, to have been at the Wharton's déjeûné. You never saw such a wo-begone business. It rained all day, as if it had never rained before. Half the people looked so hazy! as if the fog had got into their faces. It was altogether capital fun; I never enjoyed myself more. Then, afterwards, we had a fancy ball-uncommonly good that was too. What character do you think I went in?"

"A sombre one, I hope; for it would have been extremely painful to affect a cheerfulness that you did not feel."

"Ah! now, really that is too bad-cruel, faith, to remind a man of his misfortunes; for all that time, I was the most miserable dog on the face of the earth, seriously, without joking."

"Without joking! That I conclude. people seldom joke."

Miserable

Much more passed in the same strain, Lord Midhurst talking on, with heedless, blundering vivacity, and Agnes playfully unravelling his inconsistencies.

Lacy, though amused, was not altogether satisfied. He thought that Agnes appeared to take a greater pleasure in the conversation and attentions of her admirer, than was quite consistent with what, he knew, must be her real estimate of his understanding. He thought her vanity was flattered by his homage, and that she was pleased with an op

portunity of displaying her conquest. In conversation with Lord Midhurst, she also seemed to exhibit a careless familiarity with the scenes and characters of fashionable life, which Lacy thought less real than affected; and which seemed to hold out claims to importance, which he was rather disposed to deride.

"It is truly a pity," said he to himself, "that one of such beauty, elegance, and talent, is so little sensible of the ridicule to which she exposes herself, by this vulgar aspiration, after a station and consequence, which her extraction must deny her."

These reflections recalled, in some degree, his first feeling of dislike; and, unconscious of any undue arrogance in himself, he began to wish that such false pride might have a fall, and even took an uncharitable pleasure in the prospect of Miss Morton's receiving some signal mortification.

CHAPTER VI.

Une froideur, ou une incivilité, que vient de ceux qui sont au dessus de nous, nous les fait hair; mais un salut où unsou rire nous les reconcilie.

BRUYERE.

HITHERTO We have heard nothing of Lord Appleby. At this, however, let nobody be surprised, for he was not a person much calculated to attract attention any where, though decidedly more conspicuous in his own house than in any other. He was inoffensive, mild, and amiable. His chief merit in society was that of being a perfect gentleman: his countervailing demerits, vanity and dulness. His conversation was languid and common place; and its only approach to piquancy, consisted in a querulous tone of sickly fastidiousness. His vanity was of a harmless kind, which few refused to humour, and was chiefly displayed in an overweaning admiration of every thing that belonged to himself. His place, house, books, pictures, whatever he had, was infinitely better than any body else could possibly possess; while, at the same time, he disclaimed receiving from them any positive pleasure, and always lamented the trouble and vexation which they entailed upon him.

On the following morning, Lacy was indulging him with a few civil comments upon the beauties of Huntley, and complimenting him upon his liberality, in throwing it open to the inspection of the curious.

"Mr. Lacy," said his lordship, inwardly delighted with the subject, but looking the picture of misery and disgust; "never have a show house. I assure you, having tried it, that the plague, and the nuisance, and the annoyance, and the trouble, are something perfectly inconceivable. Day after day, people come, and they are admitted; and in they walk, and away they ramble through your rooms, and go where you will, there you meet them. As I say, for the time being, you are not master of your own house; your house, as I say, is not your own: you are not master of your own house. It is indeed a serious drawback from the trifling satisfaction of having things that are considered worth seeing:"

Lacy assented; but said that it must be very gratifying to think that he had the means of giving so much pleasure, and, perhaps, of improving the taste of his visiters.

"Ah, yes-very true-it ought to be gratifying, of course; though I must honestly confess that I do it rather as a duty than as any source of gratification. I have tried to remedy the evil by restricting admission to certain days-but all in vain; it would not do the throng of applicants was too great. "You see," he observed pointing out two carriages which appeared in a distant part of the approach, "a case in point-see how we are pestered. I shall just have time before they arrive to show you the picture I was mentioning," and so saying, taking Lacy by the arm, he led him into another room.

Meanwhile the carriages approached, and at length drew up before the door. The first was a substantial travelling coach, which was closely followed by a hack chaise. Both belonged to the same party, which, on being landed from their vehicles, appeared to consist of a stout middle aged gentleman, and his plump wife, three slim young

ladies, and a tall slip of a boy. Their motions were observed from the window of the room which Lacy and Lord Appleby had just quitted, and in which remained only Lady Malvern and her sister, of whom the former, hearing that they were not visiters of the family, and judging them vulgar from the air of their equipage, thought she might safely indulge in the pleasure of a stare.

"What beings!" she exclaimed, as she watched them getting out of their carriage. "Agnes, do come and look at them-those tawdry girls! and the old people-quite as good-staring about them, I declare, as if they had never seen such a house before; and now he looks this way-good heavens! it is-no-yes, it certainly is"

"Who?" said Agnes, approaching the window. "Look!" said Lady Malvern, in a tone of alarm. "Yes," replied Agnes, "there is no mistaking them. I see they are our cousins, the Bagshawes. "Hush!" said her ladyship; "come away, Agnes," and she looked suspiciously round the room to see if any one was near. "Take no notice," she added, in a low tone.

Agnes looked at her with surprise. "I think I hardly understand you. Do you mean that I should A take notice of them?"

Yes, to be sure I did-why need you?-Surely you don't intend to go out and see them?" "I do indeed."

"Then, Agnes, you will disoblige me," said Lady Malvern, walking away from her rather proudly.

"I should be sorry to do that," replied Agnes; "but I hope, Louisa, it will not be so; for I think you must acknowledge the propriety of paying some attention to such near relations.

"They are not such very near relations; besides, it is their being related that makes the difficulty.