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Clinton, in a comfortable self-satisfied tone, while Lady Edith fixed her deep-set eyes anxiously and kindly upon her. "You need not look alarmed, Lady Edith! It is the wildest notion that there can be any danger from that agreeable Jesuit. (will you kindly pull my collar straight?) His arguments have not a feather's weight with either my husband or me!-(a little more to the left, if you please.) He has distinctly explained to me six times over the doctrine of Papal infallibility, without my ever understanding it one atom more clearly, or being in any danger of adopting it."

"Mr. Clinton has surely altered his style of dress lately, and there is a sort of stern solemnity in his manner quite strange to me; I cannot like the new cut of his coat or of his countenance," ob

served Lady Edith, quietly. "He was always abstemious, as all Christians ought to be; but how very rigidly he fasts now. Mrs. Clinton, let my aged experience lift up its voice to you, even though you should consider me speaking mere oldwomanisms. Before it be too late, let me implore you, as I do with tears, to discourage that intimacy."

"You are become quite an alarmist," said Mrs. Clinton, with a victorious air, "but never fear for my husband! He is really bringing over Father Eustace. What a lovely satin that gown of Lady Eaglescairn's is! Do you remember the unac

countable antipathy my husband and Father Eustace used to show against each other in society? That sort of thing may be observed sometimes between two persons, who have nevertheless no acknowledged quarrel. They differed on every subject, misrepresented each other's opinions, misquoted each other's remarks, started an opposition dialogue with any one whom they could detach from listening to their adversary, and would not, I verily believe, have partaken of the same dish at table. How very different it is now!" said Mrs. Clinton, with an approving glance at her husband, whose appearance was as great a contrast as his nature to Father Eustace. Mr. Clinton's fair Saxon countenance, with clear, prominent, light eyes, wanted steadfastness of expression, while his quick, frank, voluble manner was strangely contrasted by the taciturn contemplative tone of the priest, so well adapted to the grave energy expressed in his dark, handsome, but very sensuallooking physiognomy. "Father Eustace has become such a friend to my husband!"

"Or rather such a flatterer!" observed Lady Edith, glancing at his look of profound respect for what Mr. Clinton was saying; "I scarcely recognise your husband now in the sort of mediæval and architectural dilettante he has lately become, and in the kind of pre-Raphael-ite costume he now adopts.

"He

"Yes! everything is changed except his spectacles," whispered Lord Iona to Beatrice. is always looking through them like the windows of an old post-chaise! I wonder if Mr. Clinton will be buried in spectacles!"

Every one in speaking to Lady Anne Darlington, or in talking of her, used some nomme de caresse, for she was the very idol of society. She was "Bijou" to her intimate friends, "Anne" to her mother, and "St. Cecilia" to Lord Iona. It seemed to Beatrice's fascinated partiality, that no eye should look at any one else when her new friend appeared, yet Lady Anne was not regularly beautiful, though beauty might hide its diminished head before the charm of her presence. Lady Anne's dress had almost a conventual character in its extreme simplicity, being of rich black velvet in the evening, and of black cloth in the morning, worn on both occasions up to the throat and down to the wrists, with white linen collar and cuffs. Her fair brown tresses were braided tightly round her small Grecian head, and her complexion was so dazzlingly white, without a tinge of colour on lip or cheek, that she looked to Beatrice like a beautiful corpse, or the ghost that might haunt an old abbey of some murdered nun. There was in all Lady Anne's movements a singular grace; her manner was natural as the wild-bird in a hedge; she had a spirit of enjoyment, where others would have

found only weariness; her laugh was soft and musical; her clear ringing lark-like voice had an enchantment in every tone, but who shall describe her singing? It was such music as Beatrice had read of, or heard of, but it had an intensity of expression that she never could have conceived. She was entranced and amazed by the noble stream of harmony which swelled and sunk upon her ear each time Lady Anne performed. While every sense this evening appeared wrapped in ecstasy, a low voice whispered close to her, it was the voice of Lord Iona speaking to Lady Anne, in a tone of comic ecstacy, "There is not a finch in the grove whose notes you cannot imitate; a dying swan is nothing to you, Anne. You must feel here like a stray canary-bird among ordinary vulgar sparrows. What a pity that Sir Allan has not come down yet, to throw in his note and to enjoy yours as he used to do."

The faintest tinge of pink stole into the creamcoloured cheek of the fair " Bijou," who glanced uneasily towards Beatrice, and then bent her head over some sheets of music, and began warbling with most intense expression of unaffected feeling, a simple but very mournful hymn, while Father Eustace turned over the leaves and accompanied her. Beatrice, radiant with delighted admiration, glanced round the circle to share the pleasure of every listener, when her eye was caught by one countenance that that startled and shocked

her. Never in all her short experience of life had Beatrice seen on any face before an expression of such intense and helpless grief, as on the venerable countenance of Lady Stratharden, as she gazed from an obscure corner of the room at her daughter and Father Eustace. Lady Stratharden's look was one of dignified sorrow, but so entirely heart-broken, that words would be inadequate to express any part of her grief. Large tears rolled slowly, heavily, and unheeded down her pale wasted cheek, and once a low sob that would not be suppressed, became sadly audible, as if wrung from her very heart, while unheeded tears gushed afresh from her aged eyes.

Nothing excites so much painful sympathy as the silence of intense grief, and Beatrice could not refrain from a stolen glance occasionally towards the afflicted mother, till at length when Father Eustace and Lady Anne commenced a hymn to the Virgin, Lady Stratharden, unable evidently to remain passive in the room, attempted to rise. Again and again she made an effort in vain, for she sunk feebly back on the sofa, pale with agitation, which seemed every moment to increase. All were preoccupied with the music, and none observed the grief-stricken mother but Beatrice, who quietly made a pretext of looking at some flowers for strolling towards that obscure corner where Lady Stratharden was seated, who instantly made her a

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