Little of what is really going on in society can be traced on its gay, sparkling surface, where, amidst laughter, music, jesting, and smiles, a deep current may be flowing on of anger, envy, mortification, and disappointment. Agnes had lately allowed herself to suspect that her preference for Captain De Crespigny was by no means mutual; and though it still lingered in her mind, out-living all that coldness and caprice which had superseded the persevering ardor with which he once endeavored to engross her attention, the indignation of her feelings drove her now to seek relief in any counter-irritation, and especially in cultivating, beside Lord Doncaster, the society where he was most depreciated, and where she heard many a story of him from the Abbe, which filled her with angry misgivings.

Captain De Crespigny now perceived, with almost bewildered astonishment, that the beautiful Agnes remained stationary the whole evening with Lord Doncaster, wishing, he conjectured, to propitiate the uncle as a preliminary to securing the nephew, and that she actually made him a secondary object in society, while it was evident the Marquis observed and enjoyed this very visible alteration. It became particularly conspicuous at last, when Captain De Crespigny having spoken, one evening, a few words to Agnes, strolled away in momentary pique at the careless inattention of her reply, after which the vacant chair, beside her and Lord Doncaster, was immediately occupied by the Abbe, who talked down both his companions, while a long discussion ensued, of evidently deepening interest, during which the eyes of all three were frequently directed towards Captain De Crespigny. Those of Agnes now assumed an almost unnatural brightness, and her cheek became dyed with a hectic flush of excitement. Then, for the first time, he perceived the gold crucifix which she held carelessly in her hand, while the Abbe spoke with an air of artful and subdued earnestness, and Lord Doncaster, looking like winter beside spring, watched, with evident admiration, the changes of color and expression which flitted like an aurora borealis on her beautiful features. It occurred to Captain De Crespigny, that his uncle, believing, perhaps, in some degree, the report of his marriage to Agnes, and being an enthusiastic admirer of beauty, might wish the Abbe first to convert the young lady to his own faith, before bestowing him upon her, and as the idea flitted through his mind, he smiled inwardly to think how they would all be disappointed. Still the ceaseless conversation continued, and Captain De Crespigny, apprehending it might never come to any particular end, resolved, for his own amusement, coute qui coute, to break up the coterie.

"Miss Dunbar," said he, advancing, and in a matter-of-course way offering his arm, "allow me the pleasure of this quadrille with you!"

Agnes seemed almost to awaken from a dream at these words, but, after a moment's evident perplexity, during which she assumed an air of dignified indecision, Lord Doncaster having turned away to converse with Mrs. O'Donoghoe, she slowly rose, and silently took her place in the dance.

Captain De Crespigny had hitherto been to Agnes like the sun to the dial, causing the lights and shadows of joy or anxiety to flit over her countenance according to his own pleasure, but now he became piqued and astonished to perceive that he could not even command her most transient attention, and with a satirical glance at her absent countenance, he emphatically exclaimed,

"A delightful party this!"

"Yes, delightful!" echoed Agnes, mechanically.

"And delightful music too!" added he, observing with increased surprise the total absence of her thoughts.

"Delightful, indeed!" repeated Agnes, in an almost dreaming tone.

"And what a delightful partner I have secured!" added Captain De Crespigny, with some asperity of tone, while gazing more and more curiously into her countenance. "I am so well pleased, that really it was fortunate I did not shoot or drown myself yesterday! We are excelling ourselves to-night, Miss Dunbar! I never saw you so agreeable, so particularly facetious! Your spirits are perfectly turbulent!"

"That is the more surprising, as I have done nothing this evening but yawn and be yawned at," replied Agnes, resuming her gay, bantering tone. "I have been plastered to the wall like Warren's Japan blacking, looking as grave as an old gate-post, while you were generally so far off, that I borrowed a good telescope at last, to try whether it might be possible to see you!"

"I could not approach within a mile, you were so barricaded with Abbes and Marquises, but you of course occupied all my thoughts. Shall I ever forget my vexation on beholding my fossil specimen of an uncle depositing his bones in the very seat I intended for myself. He is really becoming a formidable rival!"

"Very true!" replied Agnes, forcing a laugh. "Lord Doncaster is so agreeable, that I am all but captivated, and if this were leap year I might, perhaps, use the lady's privilege and propose!"

"Take care, or I shall tell him so!"

"Pray do! It will save time, and he has but little to spare!"

"I am very certain, if the old boy were ninety years younger, he would make you an offer! But certainly marriage is a juvenile indiscretion, only for young people like us!"

"Lord Doncaster says, he is any age I like, and pledges himself always to continue so!" replied Agnes, laughing, though she became agitated to the very tips of her fingers, while, trying not to seem embarrassed, she hastily drew her gloves on and off, adjusted her necklace, and betrayed, by other nervous manoeuvres, that her mind was not quite at ease under the observant eye of Captain De Crespigny, who looked at her with satirical surprise, and at last exclaimed, in accents of wonder, "May my bridle be too long, and my stirrup too short, Miss Dunbar, if I ever dreamed of jesting with you in earnest, about the old veteran amateur in flirtations, my uncle! That is rather beyond a joke,—and as for the Abbe, you ought to put him down in your private list of detestables, being a bad and dangerous man for young ladies to form an intimacy with. Let me be your father confessor to-night, Miss Dunbar, and tell me when, under his auspices, you mean to take the veil!"

Seeing Agnes become more and more embarrassed, Captain De Crespigny's politeness now induced him to change the subject, though still unable to conjecture any probable cause for her confusion; therefore assuming his usual tone of careless conceit, he added, "Mrs. O'Donoghoe tells me there are two singularly handsome officers in the room to-night; but I cannot see the second. We can be at no loss for No. 1. There is a strange-looking mortal opposite in black! He skips about in the quadrille like an industrious flea! Does it not seem like a frightful dream, that we are expected to find steps for such music as this? What would Monsieur D'Egville say, if he saw me, his favorite pupil, blundering through the figure to such discord?"

"He would still be proud of his scholar! I mistook you for Duvernay last night when you danced with Mrs. O'Donoghoe at the Crown ball. Her dancing-master must have been St. Vitus! She was as light as——"

"As a cork flying from a bottle of champagne! You seem perplexed for once to find a simile!"

"And you are not particularly happy in yours! I have been puzzling my head for the last two seconds who that gold man is opposite in uniform. He looks like a clever caricature of an officer on leave!"

"That is Charleville of ours! Mrs. O'Donoghoe considers him the first of men! almost superhuman! because, as she said to me yesterday, 'he is quite the thing! drives a tandem—rides races in a bonnet and habit—can back his horse down the steepest hill in Low Harrowgate—writes occasionally in the Sporting Magazine—and smokes more cigars in a day than the whole regiment in a week!'"

"There is an officer of that description in every regiment, who is generally called 'Jack' or 'Tom.' I detest these hunting, racing, smoking, and betting men; but you may introduce him to me when the quadrille is over."

"That is a ceremony I never perform, and never undergo! It is too solemn an affair for me to engage in! I never mean, as long as I live, to be introduced to any one—never!"

"Then if your present list of friends is to last for life, I hope it musters pretty strong?"

"Pardon me! We are not so particular at an ordinary as in an opera-box! There are ways and means of becoming acquainted without my making people conceited, by asking to be introduced! I tread on a lady's gown in passing, look shocked, beg her pardon, receive the very sweetest of smiles, enter into conversation, and am intimate in a moment!"

"Very easy and convenient! I never could imagine till now why officers had all become so awkward at parties lately, in tearing my dress with their spurs!"

"Believe me, nobody is ever introduced to anybody now, and ladies have become equally ingenious with myself in picking up acquaintances. At Almacks last season, Lady Sarah Wyvell, having the good fortune to be next me in a quadrille, though we were not acquainted, asked, with a modest diffident air, if I could possibly tell her the hour. I politely took the trouble of answering her, and mentioned, that the key of my watch had been for some time mislaid, and therefore it was not wound up; but next evening, when we met at the Russian Ambassador's fete, would you believe it, she walked up to me, and, with a fascinating smile, begged my acceptance of a watch-key, beautifully set in turquoises!"

"Which fitted exactly, of course!" added Agnes, laughing. "I like a round unvarnished tale, and admire a ready invention, especially when the story is perfectly credible, and betrays no personal conceit whatever. The world certainly grows more ridiculous every day!"

"You never said a truer thing! It is a good plan in conversation always to say what nobody can contradict! Never certainly was there a more ludicrous medley of people shuffled together, than here at this moment! Nothing but old Doncaster's whim could have brought me to such a snobbery and tag-raggery! Harrowgate is like death itself for levelling all distinctions! You may glance down the dinner-table, containing a hundred and thirty odd-looking guests, and each individual has the same quiet, little, unpretending bottle of sherry placed at his elbow, and labelled with his name. Even the great millionaire, Mr. Crawford, who might, if he chose, drink liquid gold, fares no better, though he has brought home the sort of nabob fortune people used to make long ago. The art is lost now!"

"You might find it, I dare say, in some of the Useful Knowledge books."

"Yes! but I manage still better, by spending a fortune without possessing one, which does quite as well, and gives me less trouble. The hat is his who wears it, and the world is his who enjoys it."

"What a pity that very good people like the Crawfords are so often atrociously disagreeable," observed Agnes, listlessly. "We must allow, that in this world rogues are the majority; and as their good opinion is the most easily gained, and the most easily kept, I wonder less every day that some men are satisfied to secure that, and live upon it."

"I wish I had either!" said Sir Patrick, laughing.

"The whole tribe of Crawfords are, in my opinion, seriously unpleasant, with their airs of condescending stiffness and ineffable superiority," said Agnes, "never vouchsafing to appear, except at dinner, and huddling out of sight the instant we rise. Those who desire to be exclusive should take private lodgings, and not spoil a place like this by any purseproud finery! They almost live with Marion and the Granvilles; but I abhor that whole set!"

"So I do!" exclaimed Sir Patrick. "I hate their very parrot! He sits in a golden cage at the window, looking over his nose at one in the most exclusive manner imaginable. Old Crawford was a shop-boy in some green-grocer's once, I believe; therefore, it really amused me yesterday to hear him in the loud authoritative tone of a connoisseur, finding fault with the sherry. I never pronounce upon any wine till I have drunk a few dozen of it; but it is credibly reported, that the Crawfords at home indulge in nothing but Cape Madeira and water. We, who have been brought up upon claret, conform to custom with a better grace. I should never think of putting the cellars here out of fashion, by saying what I really think of them; but entre nous, the whole contents are perfect poison. Of the two, I would rather drink the Harrowgate waters, because they have at least the one merit of being wholesome."

"Lord Doncaster seems to find the sherry drinkable," said Agnes dryly; "and, as you say, 'he has cracked a bottle or two in his time.'"

"Very true! a really aristocratic man is so accustomed to everything of the best, that he tolerates or enjoys the inconveniences of an inn or a steamboat as an amusing variety," said Mrs. O'Donoghoe. "Besides which, Miss Dunbar, between you and me and the post, Lord Doncaster is old, and somewhat passee. You and he made quite a tableau together this evening; but take my word for it, Lord Doncaster is no chicken!"

"I need not take anybody's word for that! I have my eyes in my head like others!" replied Agnes, rather sharply, and glancing towards a distant corner of the room where Lord Doncaster was seated, with his eye at the moment fixed on herself. "We may all see that he is not the youngest man in the world; but he is certainly one of the most agreeable!"

"Well! old or young," continued Mrs. O'Donoghoe, resuming her habitual smile, "Lord Doncaster is my very particular friend, and if I meet him ten times in a day, he shakes me by the hand as cordially the last time as the first."

"Tiresome old bore!" replied Sir Patrick; "I would put my hand in my pocket the second time, and tell him, once a-day must do!"

"Instead of putting it into an empty pocket, Sir Patrick, offer it to one of the two Miss Crawfords," said Mrs. O'Donoghoe, rolling her eyes affectedly round, like the wire-drawn eyes of a wax doll. "The old nabob is so rich, that it took five India ships to carry home his fortune, and he has settled his whole countless rupees on the young ladies. What do you say, gentlemen?—one each? That tall may-pole, the eldest, who looks as if she could eat her own shoulders off, will be a great catch."

"She has proposed to me twenty times," replied Captain De Crespigny, "but I am not to be had! It would be necessary for me to hang all her relations, they are so vulgar! The second looks as fat and round as from yesterday till next year; but if she were less like a turbot standing on end, more like the person I admire most in the world, and several years younger, possibly I might propose."

"If you thought she would have you," replied Mrs. O'Donoghoe, laughing, "you would propose without minding the years. If a girl had eighteen pence, you would propose instantly, for fear she might spend a shilling of it!"

"I am told Miss Crawford was born in diamond ear-rings," said Agnes. "She looks as if it had rained precious stones on her ever since,—as if she had been pelted at the Carnival with diamonds instead of sugar-plums! The price of blonde and feathers is raised in every town where the Miss Crawfords arrive!——"

"The Miss Crawfords must not be ridiculed," interrupted Captain De Crespigny, looking very magnanimous, "at least by any one except myself! They are my preserve! They both dress in the last extreme of jewellery to please me; and I am pleased. If I have a weakness in the world, it is for dress; and, in my opinion, ladies ought all to shine like glow-worms every night. Look at this indefinite article of a man approaching! Tall, and covered with orders, he looks like a house insured! Who can he be?"

"Never distress yourself about who people are," said Agnes. "Somebody's son, I believe,—and somebody's nephew or cousin, with estates in all the disturbed districts of Ireland."

"Very accurate and satisfactory! Watering-place imaginations are apt to be a little inventive; like Cuvier, who described the whole history and formation of any animal from seeing merely a single tooth! With that bottle-green coat and all that light hair on the roof his head, he looks like a bottle of porter newly drawn, and foaming at the top. It makes me thirsty to see him."

"I excel particularly in biography," added Agnes, laughing. "That tigerish-looking man you are inquiring about, with all the little stars and bits of ribbon, had a whole regiment of horses killed under him at Waterloo! He saw sixteen colonels of cavalry lose their heads that day in battle, and he received fifteen mortal wounds himself, before he left the field!"

"Agnes, your stories would be as difficult to bolt as the American oyster, which it took three men to swallow whole! You remind me of the man who contrived to place a fly's eye so that he could see through it, and he found that it multiplied everything, till a single officer appeared like a whole army. I never saw a man ride as that stranger did this morning! His horse is a mere spider, and he jumped up and down in the saddle like a cup and ball?" said Sir Patrick, laughing; "but the climax of all his atrocities was, five minutes ago, when Marion re-entered the room, I heard him request that the master of the ceremonies would introduce him to one of my sisters! I am at a loss to guess which, but here he comes, drawing on a splendid pair of gloves!"

"Pray do not let me be the victim!" said Agnes, shrinking back with a contemptuous toss of the head. "I have no turn for teaching a bear to dance! and I will not be made ridiculous by having such a partner! The ugliest man I ever saw for nothing! Is he a human being?"

"For my part, I do not feel that being ridiculous or otherwise depends on any one but myself," said Marion good-humoredly; "and if it will make a man, all ribbons and orders of merit, happy, to perform a quadrille, I have not the least objection to be his partner, especially when he wears such very clean gloves!"

"Miss Dunbar!" said the master of the ceremonies, approaching Marion in his most pompous manner, "allow me to introduce the Duke of Kinross!"

Marion accepted his Grace's offered arm, looking by no means so much petrified at the unexpected rank of her partner as Agnes did, who started, and colored with evident vexation, at having even in thought rejected the greatest man in Harrowgate, the hero of all her castles in the air, and one who was considered as eminent for ability as for rank.

"Well, Agnes!" exclaimed Sir Patrick, in a bantering tone, "for the first time in a long life you have made a blunder. You who never, even at chess, would play a pawn, if you could move a knight or a bishop, to have actually rejected a ducal coronet. I thought that in general you could draw out people's whole histories and characters like an opera-glass, and see through them in a minute. You generally know everybody's peculiarities and everybody's value, who everybody is, and what everybody does, with notes and annotations of your own, all original and authentic,—who have elder brothers to impoverish them, and rich uncles to give them hopes,—in short, their whole biography better than they know it themselves!"

"To be sure! I am an inestimable cicerone, 'honest, civil, obliging, and thoroughly to be depended on!' Where other people have only two eyes, I have three, and I make it my duty to ascertain who brings a footman or an abigail, what carriages people travel in, what stay they intend to make here, whether they hire a sitting-room, or lounge, like Mrs. O'Donoghoe, in the public saloon! I do believe the well-informed visitors at Harrowgate know exactly how much silver we carry in our purses every day, and what our washing-bills amount to!"

"Not much in some cases!" said Captain De Crespigny, fixing his satirical, mischievous glance on a shabby-genteel stranger who seemed to be lurking near and watching the lively party with an evil eye. "Look at this dark figure leaning against the door in a sort of Italian bandit attitude, trying to look romantic with his arms stuck on like crooked pins, his neckcloth perfectly strangling him, and his scarlet waistcoat like a robin-red-breast!"

"Is there a man in a waistcoat!! where?" asked Agnes eagerly. "Another Duke, I suppose. He seems like the picture of a robber in some sixpenny story book. But how he stares at you, Captain De Crespigny! I declare that look would pin me to the wall!"

"It is rather odd! Surely I have seen that man somewhere before! He must have dressed my hair at Brighton, or measured me for a coat at Dodd's. He is probably now the sort of £200 a-year man who wears a gold chain and vagabondizes about perpetually from one watering place to another! He seems by his look inclined to pick a quarrel with me; and, if he does so, I feel pretty certain he ought already to be sent among the velvets below stairs, which he certainly shall be without much ceremony. What can the fellow mean by looking such daggers at me in particular?"

"One addition is expected to the Crawford party to-night, which will puzzle you all!" said Mrs. O'Donoghoe. "That enchanting suite of rooms next the garden has been bespoken during the last three weeks, by some person whose name is quite unguessable! The landlady says that Mr. Crawford has made her solemnly promise never to divulge it! Now! there is something worth knowing!—a dark unfathomable mystery in a place like this, is perfectly inestimable!"

"I undertake to solve it in twenty-four hours!" exclaimed Sir Patrick, with animation. "When there is a real undeniable secret to be ferreted out, I am wider awake than most people! I can do everything but what is impossible! If I fail, then, as the lawyer once pathetically exclaimed, 'may my head forget the wig that covers it!' What will you bet that I succeed? Here is my betting-book to register our agreement; I never stir without it!"

"I have no turn for betting my head off my shoulders; but you shall have the Pigot diamond for your trouble!" replied Mrs. O'Donoghoe. "I have been busy about it for three weeks in vain, going about investigating, with my glass at my eye, like Paul Pry, but the maids pretend to know nothing, and the landlady looks bursting with mysterious importance whenever she speaks of her coming guests!"

"Then I am twice a man when there is anything to be found out!" continued Sir Patrick. "If I had lived in the days of the Iron mask, that affair would have been probed to the bottom, and laid open. I have quite a genius for unravelling mysteries!"

"If so, I allow you three days for scrutinizing the expected incognito, after which, do you promise and engage to furnish me with their numbers, names, professions, ages, fortunes——"

"And expectations! certainly! Also to disclose why they came here, and when they go away. Mrs. O'Donoghoe, I delight in difficulties, and glory in conquering them! I abhor everything easy! Even if you were easily pleased, I should have less pleasure in fascinating you."

At this moment, a plain travelling carriage suddenly swept round the road leading towards the Granby, while in the clear moonlight it could only be discerned that two footmen sat behind, and two lady's maids were mounted on the dickey; but before the rush of gentlemen towards the lobby, which usually takes place on such occasions, could be successfully achieved, the chariot stopped at a garden-gate beyond the usual entrance, while in the dusky obscurity the most penetrating eye could not discover who or what alighted. A torrent of waiters streamed along the passages, a noisy outcry was heard summoning the landlady, every bell in the house seemed ringing simultaneously, and Captain De Crespigny was surprised to observe the dark, stern-looking stranger standing near the door, as if he belonged to the party, and yet did not wish to be seen.

A procession of four wax candles, and a tea tray proceeding afterwards towards the newly occupied sitting-room, was all that the most enterprising observers could discover; and as there were but three cups, and Mr. Crawford was known to have joined the party, it became very plausibly conjectured by Sir Patrick that there were but two new arrivals.

The supper-bell had been rung that evening about ten minutes, and a numerous bevy of gentlemen collected round it, varied by a scanty sprinkling of ladies. The table was covered with wine glasses and crystal decanters enough to fill a glass shop, with not a drop of anything visible to drink, except cold spring water; each gentleman had half a pigeon on his plate, and each lady a glass of jelly before her. The uproar of waiters, plates, and tongues, and glasses had subsided, and the conversation was at so low an ebb, that there seemed every probability of the whole party being found asleep in their chairs next morning, when suddenly their attention was roused by the door being hurriedly opened by the soi-disant gentleman entering, who had already excited the notice of Captain De Crespigny.

Besides the eager curiosity felt in every small community, to see every one recently added to their number, this was a gentleman whom few of the company had seen before, and such a gentleman as is seldom seen anywhere. His dark hair hung in wild profusion over his head. There was an extraordinary wildness, almost amounting to ferocity, in his eyes, which had the restless glare of a wild beast's, as he quickly glanced round the table, while his pale haggard features, and the strong compression of his upper lip, gave him an air of irritable melancholy, along with a look of flustered, anxious suspicion quite unaccountable. He seemed annoyed at having attracted any observation, while, if Banquo's ghost had appeared, the apparition could scarcely have awakened more attention, as the party had little to do, and nothing else to think of.

"One would fancy a kangaroo had come in to supper!" muttered he, angrily, glancing round with a look of scorching hatred at Captain De Crespigny, and drawing his chair near Mrs. O'Donoghoe, who was almost the only lady still remaining. He then cut himself a supply of cold veal, that might have dined a couple of grouse-shooters, with ham in proportion, not at all carved on the Vauxhall pattern, and glancing at all the observant eyes around the table, he added, endeavoring to look in a more amiable mood, while a most unpleasing attempt at a smile for a moment disturbed his features; "I see, gentlemen, you are somewhat amazed at my powers of mastication! I am not Dando; but let me tell you I could finish all we see, and pick the bones of that turkey besides. What man in his senses would profess to be hungry, and sit down to half a pigeon! You seem to be quite a Temperance Society here! Fifteen jugs of water in regimental order round the table! The waiters must have bottled off the Thames!"

A suppressed whisper ran round the table, circulating many wondering conjectures who the stranger could possibly be, for there appeared a vehemence in his tone, and an irritability in his eye most repulsive and peculiar.

"That man looks as if he had stepped forth ready made, from one of Mrs. Radcliffe's romances," exclaimed Mrs. O'Donoghoe, in an apprehensive tone, as she strolled away from the table. "Who can he be?"

"One of the swell mob! I remember his picking my pocket in Bond Street, last spring," replied Captain De Crespigny, confidentially. "Did you not observe his bunch of skeleton keys."

"You are quite mistaken," interposed Sir Patrick. "He is one of the garden-room party. I saw him waiting for them in the passage; people of prodigious fortune I assure you! Their names are—no matter what! but they have estates in—I don't know how many counties!"

"He has rather an aristocratic look!" added Mrs. O'Donoghoe. "The sort of arbitrary air, as if he were accustomed to command a regiment!"

"More like an unengaged actor from one of the minor theatres, or a travelling dancing master. They are very well got up sometimes, and he is exactly according to the last 'gentleman's fashions for the month,'" said Captain De Crespigny. "But certainly in some shape or other, a strolling gentleman-beggar; probably, like the dustman's dog, he answers to any name."

"Perhaps," added Sir Patrick, laughing, "one of those innumerable lecturers on astronomy, who are constantly tormenting me with prospectuses. If any man whatever is in distress, he puts on a decent coat, and announces a popular course of lectures, in which he makes the comets ten times hotter than ever, and the stars as many millions of miles distant as he pleases, shows plenty of diagrams, talks big about Sir Isaac Newton, gives a dissertation on the political economy of the moon; tells a few anecdotes, hazards a few conjectures, doubts what everybody believes, or believes what everybody doubts, and his bread is baked. I mean to try the plan myself some day!"

"Depend upon it, he is a peer of the realm," added Mrs. O'Donoghoe, more imperatively than before. "I heard that Lord Wakefield was expected to-day. His sister, Lady Jane, whom I saw once at a Spitalfields ball, was thin, with dark hair, exactly in that style."

"I have no doubt he is an Earl one day, and a Duke the next, as it happens to suit his fancy; and if you look well at him, Mrs. O'Donoghoe, he has a coronet tattooed on his forehead," whispered Captain De Crespigny. "That is the very last new fashion for peers."

"Coronets are falling into great disuse now; so I am glad they are to be displayed any where," replied Agnes. "Lady Towercliffe's eldest son, Lord St. Abbe, used to have one embroidered on his pinafore; but the coronet on Lord Doncaster's chariot now is almost invisible, and not larger than you would use for the seal of a note."

"I know whose taste ought to be paramount in ordering the next carriage bearing the Doncaster arms," whispered Captain De Crespigny, throwing a world of arch expression into his countenance. "How exceedingly well our shield would look quartered with the lion rampant, and the eight roses of the Dunbars!"

Agnes did not, as she would have done formerly, on hearing so broad an insinuation, look down and blush, or attempt to blush; but she fixed a long and searching look on Captain De Crespigny, during which her large lustrous eyes betrayed an inward struggle between the interest with which she would once have gathered up every expression of her voice, and the lurking angry suspicion she now felt of his sincerity; but her confidence was in some degree restored, when, keeping up a lively dialogue till the last moment, he assumed his most becoming looks, and escorted her to the door.

"Pray, Miss Dunbar," said he gravely, "will you give me a very serious answer to a very serious question?"

"Perhaps I may," replied Agnes, looking rather startled.

"Then, whether do you think ladies or gentlemen are the greatest humbugs?"

"Gentlemen, certainly; for they often pretend to feel what they do not, but ladies conceal what they do."