still fewer an agreeable manner of relating anecdotes, either great or small."

Florence looked surprised, but, as she knew nothing about society, she discreetly held her tongue. "I see papa beckoning to me to come down," she observed, after a pause. "When Lady Caroline is

rested

The sentence was unfinished, for at this moment the heads of two gentlemen emerged above the top of the parapet. Lord Wentworth was the first to spring from the spiral stair upon the battlements of the tower.

"You abuse your privileges, madonna,” he said gaily to Florence. "We can exist without the society of these ladies no longer. Lady Caroline, allow me to escort you to the banqueting-hall.”

"Pon my life, these old walls are better adapted to bats and owls than fair ladies or

"Fine gentlemen," interposed Miss Seymour, with a scornful laugh.

Greville Beaumont contemplated his elegant figure, which was plentifully bespattered with dust and dirt, in rueful silence. His fair mistress turned her back upon him, and Florence tried not to laugh.

The party soon gathered in the banqueting-hall— for, if truth must be confessed, they were very hungry. The old walls rang to the unwonted sound of cheerful voices and merry peals of laughter. All were gay, and exerted themselves to the utmost. Who could imagine that there were aching hearts among them?

The harper from Hoel's Farm, at the request of Mr. Dudley, had brought his harp, and played several Welsh melodies with great spirit. The young ladies sang Augusta, fashionable airs from fashionable operas; Florence, the ballads of the Welsh countrie;' Mademoiselle Monricher, the romances of her native land.

Lord Wentworth insisted upon a dance; the tables were moved; the harper struck up. His lordship opened the ball with Florence; and the whole party footed it away right merrily, until the lengthening shadows warned them to desist.

100

CHAPTER XI.

C'EST à moi de choisir mon gendre;
Toi, tel qu'il est, c'est à toi de le prendre ;
De vous aimer, si vous pouvez tous deux,
Et d'obéir à tout ce que je veux.

L'Enfant Prodigue.

THE two families separated, mutually pleased with each other. Colonel Seymour expressed unqualified admiration of Mr. Dudley and his daughter, and invited them to Seymour's Court, with graceful hospitality. Lady Caroline felt a real interest in the motherless girl, and echoed, à l'ordinaire, the sentiments of her lord and master. Augusta gave her mite of praise in favour of both father and daughter. Mr. Greville Beaumont, ditto.

Mr. Dudley, ever alive to kindness, thanked Lord Wentworth for the introduction he had forced upon him, and accepted the Colonel's pressing invitations, as often as his sedentary habits allowed him to avail himself of them.

Florence, gay as a lark, and active as a mountaineer, ofttimes scampered over to Seymour's Court in the early morning, (mounted on a sure-footed pony), and made her way, unannounced, to Miss Seymour's boudoir, which she lighted up with her presence like a sunbeam. Augusta's boudoir was a dainty chamber, a very triumph of fashionable upholstery. Florence contrasted the rose-coloured hangings, the gilded cornices, the silken lounges, the ormolu tables, covered with the hundred gimcracks indispensable to the well-being of a

fashionable belle-the costly ornaments, the brilliant flowers, with the humble appointments of her own little chamber in the Maiden's Tower. And then, Augusta was so lovely, so exquisitely dressed, always en evidence!

Florence looked at her own simple toilette, and sighed. And yet, surrounded by every luxury which wealth could procure, Augusta was not happy; a shade of discontent too often clouded her fair brow. What Iwas the cause? Florence had a theory of her own. Miss Seymour was going to be married. Unquestionably, Miss Seymour was in love! What more natural than that excess of happiness should prove irritating rather than soothing to the fine-spun nerves of a sensitive young lady?

"Here she comes, curst and sad;
Cupid is a knavish lad,

Thus to make poor females mad,"

was the ironical salutation of Florence on more than one occasion, when her friend joined her with a moody brow. Augusta would laugh off the momentary embarrassment these lines never failed to produce, and quickly change the subject.

Florence was very far from suspecting the true position of affairs; she knew that the wedding was to take place in the following spring, and that Colonel and Lady Caroline Seymour regarded the bridegroom elect as a magnificent parti for their daughter; but she had no idea that Augusta's feelings had not been consulted. She knew very little of Mr. Greville Beaumont. day after the picnic he received a summons from Nice to attend the deathbed of an uncle, from whom he had expectations. Perhaps his absence ruffled the fair brow of his beautiful mistress!

The

A succession of gay visitors filled Seymour's Court during the summer months; for the Colonel kept open house. Picnics, fêtes champêtres, archery meetings, and summer balls, were of frequent occurrence.

Florence was a universal favourite; she was too youthful and unaffected to excite envy among the ladies, while her gay good-humour and high spirit charmed the gentlemen. She was invaluable at a picnic; she knew the most beautiful, as well as the most inaccessible, points of view in all the country round. Light of foot and agile as a young roe, she would spring from rock to rock, or trip fearlessly upon the edge of precipices which daunted the courage of all the young ladies, and some of the young gentlemen of the party.

"Follow the leader," was our heroine's favourite pastime, and a charming leader she was! Many a wild ramble did she lead some perfumed dandy, or thinlyshod damsel, whose elaborate toilettes excited her mocking fancy.

"They little thought when they set out
Of running such a rig."

The elders of the party watched her slight, girlish figure, as she darted hither and thither among the rocks. or scaled the almost precipitous paths cut on the face of the hills, with admiration not unmixed with anxiety. Madoc bounded before or followed on her track, ever and anon rousing the slumbering echoes of the mountains with his joyous bark.

Mr. Dudley rarely joined these expeditions, or in all probability he would have been annoyed at the attention and admiration his daughter excited.

Florence's intercourse with the Seymours was cut short in an unexpected manner.

One morning, about two months after her first introduction to her new friends, Florence paid an early visit to Miss Seymour. According to custom, she crossed the great hall, ran up the grand stairs, and made her way to Augusta's boudoir, unannounced.

She tapped lightly; no answer! She repeated the summons with the same success. She hesitated a moment, gently turned the handle of the door and entered.

Augusta was lying upon the floor, her eyes closed, her