One of the greatest pleasures in life is derived from the unexpectedness of events, without which existence would lose much of its interest, and finding herself thus emancipated from school, settled at home, and relieved from her worst fears respecting Sir Patrick, Marion no sooner escaped from her unexpected glimpse of the jovial party in the dining-room, than, lightly carolling some snatches of a popular song, she flew up stairs the happiest of the happy, to find the scene of Agnes' toilette, whom she discovered at last all joy and flutter at the prospect of a ball at Lady Towercliffe's in the palace.

The softening effect of happiness on stern and rugged natures has been often remarked, but selfishness never slumbers, and the reception Agnes bestowed on Marion partook more of astonishment than of pleasure, and was mingled much more with censure than with approbation. Still, after expressing more wonder than the occasion called for, what could possibly have brought her home, and the most unbounded censure of Mrs. Penfold for her "unjustifiable conduct" in sending her, Agnes, having no one better, or rather no one else to talk to, though not violently delighted at the unexpected meeting, gave some fragments of her attention to Marion, whose deep tender eyes were sparkling with affectionate pleasure on again seeing her sister, while her countenance, from recent agitation, looked like an April face of smiles and tears.

"What a storm in a tea-cup you have had at Mrs. Penfold's! tiresome old cat! I am glad it teased her! Dixon! pin that wreath more to the right:—not quite so far! there!—oh! how perfect!" said Agnes, gazing with exultation at her own extraordinary beauty. "Pat must find out some other school for you, Marion! It would never do to stay idling here! Dixon! never shew me that dress again! Wear it yourself or burn it, but blue always looks vulgar! I have lucky and unlucky gowns! Some in which I meet with all the friends I wish to meet, and dance with all the partners I prefer, but that dress is a happy riddance. I remember once being obliged, when wearing it, to dance three times and go to supper with stupid, tiresome Lord Wigton! Dixon! fetch my bouquet! not that withered old thing, but the one Captain De Crespigny brought me to-night. Fetch it from the drawing-room."

"So that horrid Dixon is still with you!" whispered Marion, as soon as the abigail's last frill disappeared. "I very seldom dislike anybody, Agnes, but she is very odd. There is a strange gleam about her eyes, which look so sharp and penetrating, they have prongs that pierce when they are turned on me."

"Yes!" said Agnes, laughing, "she does sometimes look through me till I feel myself nailed to the wall."

"Moreover, she has such a flattering, fawning, cunning manner, that I wonder you can tolerate her for an hour," continued Marion. "We know so little of her, too, that she is like a person fallen from the clouds!"

"Oh! there you are wrong, for Lady Towercliffe says she is 'a perfect treasure!' Consider, too, what low terms she accepts, merely from her desire to serve me! I never saw a creature so preternaturally anxious to be taken, and now, after two years' practice, she really is excellent. Do you remember at the time I engaged Dixon, what a perfect romance her history was! Pat did not believe a word of it; but to do her justice, she made it very entertaining. I hope, at least, the greater part was founded on fact!"

"Why does she wear widow's weeds,—she did not mention at first having ever been married!"

"No more she did! how strangely beautiful she looks in them, like the abbess of a convent! Her husband, if ever she had one, which I doubt, is said to have died, abroad, and her only wish is never to see strangers. Pat insists she has had some affaire du coeur, but I tell him it must positively have been with old Sir Arthur, for she started so visibly one day long ago, and became redder than red, when I said he was coming to dinner."

Seeing Agnes in so unusually gracious and communicative a mood, Marion ventured now to inquire into the state of her brother's affairs, saying, she supposed he must inevitably sell his estate, go abroad, or retrench, as the expedient of planting half-pence, to grow into guineas, had not yet been brought to perfection, even by Sir Patrick, though it had so long been a subject of wonder how he contrived to get on.

"This has been a horrid business!" exclaimed Agnes peevishly; "as for Pat himself, he will do very well! Trust him for taking care of that. He has always money enough and to spare for his own amusement, though sometimes he would hardly even pay the postage of a letter to save my life. Only think of his bringing me here, out of everybody's way, during the most beautiful years of my existence! Our friends will scarcely imagine that I think it worth chair hire to travel from this burying-place to the inhabited world! What can one do. We shall give some quadrille parties ourselves, but scarcely a living soul is within reach except the Towercliffes, and those odious Granvilles!"

"The Granvilles!" exclaimed Marion, in a blaze of joy and astonishment; "dear Clara! is she here."

"Yes; but she cuts this house entirely, and we are hardly on speaking terms, therefore let me beg you not to attempt any violent missyish, boarding-school friendships in that quarter. I cannot enter into particulars, but rest assured that the less you see of Clara the better for me,—and the better, too, for Patrick. Never, for your life, mention her name before him."

"Why?" asked Marion with a look of bewildered disappointment. "Agnes, I cannot give up Clara Granville!"

"Perhaps, then, she may give you up! She abhors the whole family now! If I must not veto her without rendering a reason, let me tell you that there is a very awkward pecuniary quarrel between Mr. Granville, Pat, and Mr. De Crespigny. It is merely one of their madcap tricks, but extremely annoying. You have often heard Sir Arthur tell of three Yorkshire baronets, who signed a mutual contract sixty years ago, that the first of them who married should forfeit £10,000 to both the others."

"Yes; and not one of them ever ventured to dispose of himself at so great a sacrifice."

"Well! some years afterwards, the subject was discussed one day in public conclave, at the Harrowgate ordinary, and what should the late Mr. Granville do, in company with Major De Crespigny and our father, but, like a set of madmen, as they must have been at the moment, drew up, for a frolic, precisely such an agreement for themselves, which they signed and sealed, making some of the 150 strangers present act as witnesses. The whole affair had been long forgotten, when Mr. Granville married some fright of a girl, all nose and freckles, merely because of her being amiable, or some such whim. She lived long enough to make saints of the whole family, and died after her son and daughter were only a few years old."

"Then how is your quarrel with Clara tacked on to this affair, I cannot quite trace the connexion."

"Why! Pat has been very angry at Mr. Granville lately about some unexplainable affront; so, having accidentally found the old Harrowgate document, and being very hard up for money, he and Captain De Crespigny are threatening to levy the fine of £10,000 due to each of them, and poor Mr. Granville is, as you may suppose, rather indignant, having been all his life stringing halfpence together, to pay off his father's debts, though no one could legally oblige him. As Pat says, 'more fool he!' You know our brother's favorite expression of contempt is, to describe any one as 'the sort of man who would lock up his money!'"

"What a shocking affair!" exclaimed Marion, coloring with shame and indignation. "As uncle Arthur says, Patrick would do anything for money short of a highway robbery! Surely, Agnes, he cannot be in earnest."

"Pshaw! never mind being amiable now," replied Agnes impatiently; "we need not act to empty benches! I am already aware that you, Marion, are on the exact pattern of what Mrs. Hannah Moore would bespeak to order for a sister or daughter; but with all you learn at school, pray learn to keep that goodyism out of sight, for I can fancy nothing more intolerable than a young lady turned out on the model of those horrid sententious books, filled with advice to young ladies. Mrs. Ellis writes to the 'Women of England,' but she luckily leaves the 'Women of Scotland,' to their own devices, without troubling us to be exorbitantly amiable."

"I shall be in no hurry to see Clara now!" continued Marion, dejectedly. "I suppose Patrick will be cut by all gentlemen for such unjustifiable conduct."

"Oh dear, no! Nobody is ever cut for anything now as long as he has money! I can scarcely tell the thing upon earth, except cheating at cards, that a man of £10,000 a-year may not do, and yet be as well received as ever,—and ladies ditto! Any woman who can afford a court plume, and many even who cannot afford, may fit on her ostrich feathers, and go to court with as proud a step and as lofty a carriage, as either you or I. Your uncle, Sir Arthur, complains that there is no such as 'moral indignation' in the world now, and so much the better. What good would it do to anybody? If a gentleman once gets into a fashionable club, he is made for life, and may ever afterwards defy the world to look askance at him."

"Then nobody takes any notice of Patrick's affairs?" asked Marion doubtfully.

"No; except uncle Arthur, who makes himself quite absurd about them; refuses to dine here; turns his back on Patrick at the club, in a most un-uncle-like manner; and performs all sorts of antics to testify his annoyance; but we are both rather glad he no longer comes prosing to this house, and that we need never enter his. The Admiral is a fitter companion for those old pictures round the wall than for us. Do not look at me with that hair-standing-on end expression! I can't help what Patrick does, and you will soon get accustomed to such things."

"Oh no, never! I hope never! but Patrick cannot surely push that claim in earnest against the Granvilles. He will refund the money, will he not, Agnes?"

"Perhaps, when all his other creditors are paid off. Now spare the whites of your eyes, and do not look at me as if I had five heads, but pray attend to my injunction, and avoid Clara, who is only fit to be a saint in a niche at her brother's chapel. You may know her at any distance now by her five-year-old dresses and country-cousin bonnets. Richard Granville has taken orders at last, and become a most superb preacher. In short, the Granvilles are good, worthy, dull, respectable people as ever lived, though the very last upon earth that would suit us."

"Do you mean to be severe, Agnes? I hope you are mistaken!" replied Marion, humbled and depressed by all she had heard. "I have sometimes felt, when with Clara, as if goodness were infectious, and never hear of any people better than myself without wishing at least to be in the same room with them."

"Take my word for it, Marion, these enormously good, sagacious persons are better to look at than to converse with. They may be admired at a distance, but the greater the distance the better; and pray never set-up in that line yourself, as nothing is more unpopular. Clara invited me, when we first arrived here, to one of her tea parties! some horrid Granville-ish affair, I have no doubt! But I knew my own value better than to go. Fancy me, Agnes Dunbar, at a good party!"

"I hope you might not be so very much out of place, Agnes!" replied Marion, with an arch and pretty smile. "Whenever I give 'good parties' you shall be the very first person invited!"

"Then take my apology now,—previously engaged! Indeed, I may perhaps consider myself an engaged person in every sense, Marion. Captain De Crespigny has already almost proposed several times, and makes no secret of his attachment. Oh, never mind Dixon! She knows who sent me this bouquet and all about it. Captain De Crespigny tells me he has planted all my favorite flowers at Kilmarnock Abbey, and often says what a resource they will hereafter become to me! Here are all the letters of my name grouped together, Anemone, Geranium, Narcissus, Everlasting, and Sweet William."

"Very ingenious," observed Marion, smiling.

"I promised not to mention whose device it was; therefore, Marion, as I am exceedingly particular about keeping my word, if any one guesses where I got this, remember to recollect that I did not tell. But, Dixon, what is the meaning of this? the geranium is broken and these flowers are so withered, they have not surely been in water."

When Marion looked accidentally at Dixon, she was startled to perceive that a mortal paleness had overspread her features, which bore a strange bewildered expression, while her hand, in which she held the flowers, trembled visibly, but she said nothing, and Agnes, in the triumphant gaiety of her spirits, rattled heedlessly on.

"One of the rooms at Beaujolie Castle, which Captain De Crespigny already calls 'my boudoir,' opens into a conservatory filled with rare exotics, but he says I shall be the brightest flower of the whole, though never born to blush unseen, if he can help it! How very droll he is, paying compliments often that would make one feel beautiful for a year. He said this morning, when Patrick complained of the room being hot, that he wished I would fan it with my eyelashes, and asked for one of them to wear as a feather in his Highland bonnet! Yesterday, when I showed Captain De Crespigny this new pearl hoop, he said I spoiled the symmetry of my hand with rings, as there was not a jewel in the world fit for me to wear, and only one ring that ought ever to be placed here! You should have seen his sentimental look on the occasion, which might have done for twenty proposals!"

"One would have been enough," said Marion, smiling.

"What he said was quite sufficiently explicit, and I only wish he would appear a little more diffident, as his look was most provoking self-satisfied, when he added, 'how fortunate will be the happy man who places a ring on that finger!' When speaking of the Admiral, too, he always now calls him 'uncle Arthur!' and yesterday, at taking leave, he said in his half jocular, half serious tone, 'I shall live upon the Bridge of Sighs till we meet again!'"

"Then, pray, let him stay here till he is a little less confident," replied Marion, laughing. "You should teach diffidence in three lessons, Agnes; he has no right to seem sure of success till he has obtained your consent point blank. You have many admirers to choose among."

"Squadrons of admirers, but not so many lovers as you think, Marion! The race of marrying men is becoming extinct in the world, so I must not be severely discouraging to poor diffident Captain De Crespigny, who has been setting his mustachios at me so long. Your notions about keeping people in suspense are quite of the old school, when ladies used all to be upon stilts, but 'nous avons change tout cela.'"

"I am sorry for it. We should all have been born when Sir Arthur was, and I wish everybody were like him."

"Spectacles, grey hair, and all! Thank you, Marion, but I am not particular, and feel quite satisfied to be a contemporary of Captain De Crespigny. If you could but have heard him this morning when he sang the 'Pirate's Serenade,'" said Agnes, warbling the words to herself,

"This night, or never, my bride thou shalt be."

While Agnes continued singing sotto voce for some minutes, her whole heart and thoughts occupied with agreeable retrospections, the eye of Marion again accidentally wandered towards Dixon, and she was startled out of a reverie into something almost approaching alarm, by observing her attitude and expression. With features as pale and rigid as those of a corpse, she gazed at Agnes, and there was an intensity in her look perfectly unaccountable, while a dazzling and terrible light glittered in her eyes. Marion with difficulty suppressed an exclamation of astonishment, when she perceived the extraordinary change in Dixon's countenance, but with a private resolution to watch more narrowly than before, what such evident agitation could mean, she determined as yet to make no remark, but allowed Agnes to rattle on undisturbed, while her own thoughts were filled with perplexity and surprise.

"Yesterday, Marion, Captain De Crespigny actually made me read over with him that proposal scene in the new novel, 'Matrimonial Felicity.' I nearly died of confusion when he doubled down the page, saying, he hoped this was not the last time we should study it together. The story has but one fault, that the hero makes rather a low marriage, and of that Captain De Crespigny expressed an utter abhorrence. I remember ages ago, his making me laugh so excessively with a description of some school-boy attachment he had in Yorkshire. Such a burlesque upon love! It was exquisite! The silver thimbles and wall-flowers he presented to a fair damsel in prunella shoes, and no gloves, while his gages d'amour were accompanied with verses borrowed from the Irish Melodies, and passed off as his own. I forgot always to ask what became of the poor deluded girl at last—probably married before this time to some fat farmer or thriving shopkeeper, but for my own part, the misery of an unrequited attachment is what I never can know. Captain De Crespigny really is the only person one could possibly have fancied."

A loud and startling crash at this moment interrupted Agnes' delightful reminiscences. Marion instinctively sprang from her seat with alarm, and looked hastily round, when she perceived that Dixon had tripped over and thrown down a table covered with china ornaments, on which Miss Dunbar had frequently squandered half her income, even at times when she could scarcely afford a dress. The etiquette being now established that all young ladies, of whatever means, shall cultivate a passion for china and hot-house plants, Agnes had made a collection of second-rate vases and third-rate tea cups, interspersed with stunted hyacinths and drooping camellias, at so great an expense that Sir Patrick often recommended her to take a wing of the bazaar and sell off all her trumpery again. The whole assortment now lay in fragments on the floor, while Agnes delivered herself up to agonies of lamentation, scolding, and wondering, over the ruin of her hoarded treasures, while she pointed out with consternation how nearly the table had fallen with its edge upon her own foot, which might have lamed her for life. The "fall of china" is a proverbial trial of temper, and that of Agnes did not prove on this occasion invulnerable, while the epithets, "awkward wretch!" and "stupid idiot!" were audibly lavished on the offending abigail.

Marion appeared exclusively occupied in gathering up the scattered fragments of china, and arranging them together, but her eye was secretly observing Dixon, the strange wild expression of whose features filled her with indefinite apprehension. In her countenance there gleamed, certainly, for an instant, a dark smile of malignant satisfaction. Marion felt sure that it was so. Could the poor creature's mind be shipwrecked? Was she insane? Her look had become fierce and haggard, her forehead of a deadly paleness, and when she caught the eye of Marion earnestly fixed upon her, she started up, with a frown of angry defiance, and hurried out of the room.

"This is a most calamitous catastrophe!" exclaimed Agnes, disconsolately. "How could Dixon be so intolerably stupid?"

"Are you quite certain it proceeded from stupidity? The accident is altogether very strange," observed Marion, going close up to her sister, and relating all she had observed during that evening in the very lowest whisper, for Marion felt a nervous consciousness that Dixon was not far off, and might attempt to overhear them. A stealthy step was heard on the stair after she concluded, but Marion, thoroughly engrossed with the subject, reiterated once more her conviction that there had been something more than common in the manner of Dixon, whom she advised Agnes to watch very carefully, if she did not part with her soon.

"You were always prejudiced against Dixon, poor stupid fool that she is, Marion. I wish I had sent her adrift before she broke all the china, but it is very unlike you to be so severe! How can you fancy the creature did it on purpose? That is too bad, when you might have seen how ghastly pale she became!"

"I did see, Agnes! and that makes me wonder only the more! No one ever looked like that surely, for breaking a few china gewgaws!"

"Marion! speak respectfully of my treasures! But you are in a most censorious mood this evening: very different from common, when you are generally a knight-errant in all our conversations, defending everybody. But nothing pleases you to-night. My admirer first, then my maid, my china, and even Patrick, who certainly behaved exceedingly ill to-day, in not asking me to preside at his party. The pretext was, that we had no chaperon, but I had the greatest mind, in a fit of offended dignity, to leave his house."

"Your dignity would have been rather put out of countenance, by having to borrow my carriage if you did go!" said Sir Patrick, who had laughingly entered the room unobserved. "Lady Towercliffe may perhaps receive you in time for her six o'clock breakfast to-morrow morning, Agnes, but unless you make more haste, the supper and dancing will be quite out of the question. Past twelve o'clock, and a rainy night!"

Sir Patrick was a good-natured, selfish man, willing that everybody should be happy, provided it put him to no personal inconvenience, and when Marion took this opportunity to explain the circumstances of her very unexpected return, he merely bestowed a contemptuous whistle on the description of Mrs. Penfold's wrath, laughed at Marion's evident anxiety about his embarrassments, and then desired her to set about being happy at home the best way she could, as he thought she might make the rest of her life a holiday now. "And," added he, in his usual gay rallying tone, "forget for ever all your grievances at Mrs. Penfold's, or rather, Mrs. Tenfold's, on account of the breadth of her person and the length of her bills!"