young Oxonian, who had looked up from his book, smiling at the attack of his lively sister." She sets her own impatience for change all to the score of Rosy's voice and my flute-playing, whereas the real object is a fine field for the triumph of her own brilliant finger,'-wasn't that the epithet, Lucy, Sir Charles Meredith applied to it the other evening?"

"Well! well!" said Mrs Faulkner, with a slight shake of the head, as she went on quietly with her everlasting carpet-work," I shall be pleased, no doubt, when the new room is built and finished, and I hear my childrens' voices and our fine instrument to greater advantage than is now possible; but I have no love for change, and the noise and bustle of workpeople; then-as your dear father says," and she looked up for a moment with glistening eyes into her husband's face" we have been very happy in this poor old room."

"So we have, mamma!" half whispered the dove-eyed Rosomond, edging closer to her mother as she sat beside her, “very, very happy! and I am half sorry now. . . . How well the old oak wainscotting sets off grandpapa's picture there, in its beautiful carved frame!"

"Very fine, ladies! I shall have you presently petitioning that the old room may remain inviolate after all, and for my part——”

"Oh, no, no, papa," broke in his more volatile daughter; "that's only one of Rosy's sentimentalities, and love of the antique, and the pictorial, and all that sort of thing she'll be as glad of the alteration; as for Edmund

"Speak for yourself, Miss Lucy!" interrupted her brother. "The fact is, sir! Lucy is dying to give dances as well as musical evenings, and as that is out of the question in rooms of these dimensions

"Well! if I am, Mister Malapert! you will be quite ready to profit by my projects. Didn't you say only yesterday, when you whisked me round the room in that rude way-didn't you say... But now, dear, dear papa! as Edmund has hinted at the thing, suppose you were to promise we should open the new room with something gay and agreeable ;-let me see -it will not do this year I know; but by this time twelvemonth-ay,

that's just the thing! My grave elder sister then will be twenty next 10th of April. . . . . ."

The merry girl made a sudden pause in the midst of her lighthearted rattle, struck by the altered expression of her father's face, and the look of sad meaning interchanged between him and her mother, who drew her eldest daughter fondly towards her, as she exclaimed, "Oh! no, no, God forbid! we will plan no such birthday celebrations for our Rosomond." There was a general silence; but Edmund's spread hand was on his book, and Rosomond's pencil was laid down, and a shade of seriousness had stolen even over Lucy's laughing face, as the eyes of all three were fixed with enquiring earnestness on those of their parents.

6

"No, my dear children," said Mr Faulkner, with affectionate seriousness, after an interval of seemingly painful recollection, "we will lay down no such plans for the future. Short-lived, short-sighted creatures that we are, it befits not us to sayThis will we do a twelvemonth hence.' My children, come round me; draw your chairs near, and I will tell you how it came to pass that a striking and affecting occurrence in our own family pressed upon me, even in the heyday of my youth, the deeply solemn sense of the Preacher's words,

Count not on to-morrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.'

"You all remember my uncleyour great-uncle, Sir Edmund De Beauvoir (you know he had taken that name on his marriage with the heiress of the De Beauvoirs)-your godfather, Edmund. And, Rosy, you may remember to have heard that you were christened after his only daughter, his only child, who died before your birth-before my marriage with your mother-my dear cousin and playfellow, Rosomond de Beauvoir. You can all recollect staying with your mother and me at his fine old place, Hawkwood Hall; and how you used to play at hide-andseek in all the odd corners and rambling passages, and, licensed by the kind old man's indulgence, race through every room in the house, one excepted, the entrance of which was interdicted, not to you only, but to every other person, except at stated hours, when, leading you by the hat

your mother and I followed our venerable uncle to the upper end of the noble, splendidly decorated saloon, where he took his station before the Bible and Prayer-book, laid ready for him by his white-haired butler, and read the prayers and chapters for morning and evening service with such impressive solemnity to his assembled household.

"My uncle and aunt, as I told you, had one only daughter, the sole heiress of immense estates-the idol of their heart, the object in whom centred its hopes and cares, its joys and projects. Alas! in that idolatry, in the absorbing and worldly nature of those cares and projects, lay too probably the root of their offending;' the cause of a dispensation which testified to the stricken and awakened heart that God will be content with no divided worship-no half-dedication.

"Sir Edmund had been twice married; and he was already far advanced in life, when, on the dissolution by death of his first childless union, he formed a second connexion with the heiress of the De Beauvoirs, who became the mother of my sweet cousin, Rosomond, the child of his old age.

66

Though the son of his father's younger brother, I was many years his senior, and having no sisters of my own, felt all a brother's fondness for the dear little girl, who returned my affection with the warmth of her frank and loving nature; and I was not less in favour with her parents, well disposed as they were toward the only son of an only and beloved brother, for being the friend and favourite of their darling Rosomond, a very romp at heart, and, in spite of lectures and remonstrances from governesses, my lady, and my lady's maid, delighting far more in a race on the lawn with cousin Frank, ungloved and unbonneted, or a row on the lake, and a tug at the oar, or a scamper on her little wild Welsh pony, with him for her only squire, than in the acquirement of those ineffable graces, indispensable, in Mademoiselle Mignard's opinion, to the perfecting of une jeune personne parfaitement bien élevée.' But there was a grace beyond the reach of art' in the sweet, natural manners of her intractable pupil, and a feminine gentleness of

mind, that now interposed to rein the gay spirit within the limits of womanly decorum, even in the wildest outbreak of exuberant gladness; and when she came bounding in like a young fawn, flushed with exercise, her fine luxuriance of rich brown hair beautifully dishevelled, her deep blue eye sparkling with joyous excitement, the pretty hands held up pleadingly, and the mock-prayer for pardon on her coral lips, neither Sir Edmund nor Lady de Beauvoir could ever hold fast their purpose of seriously rebuking the smiling culprit, and setting before her in awful array the long list of her offences. I hardly know why I dwell thus minutely on these childish passages in the life of my dear cousin, but that I love to recall every circumstance connected with its too short duration; and even now I see her as just described, standing in mock-penitence before the doating parents, whose premeditated words of grave remonstrance were changed in the utterance to epithets of endearment as she threw her arms about their necks, and half-smothered them with kisses.

"Such was Rosomond de Beauvoir in her beautiful childhood; such she still was in the first blush and bloom of her more beautiful girlhood, though gifted with intellectual powers, the rapid developement of which, and the womanly forwardness of her fine tall person, made more enchanting the contrasting simplicity, and almost childish backwardness of her tastes and feelings, and the innocent frankness of manner, yet unmodified even by the maidenly reserve so becoming in confirmed womanhood. Nature had made' of Rosamond a lady of her own; but sadly wasted upon her was the elaborate training that would have metamorphosed her into a fashionable automaton; and dearly as her parents loved her, they had it more at heart, I fear, however unconsciously, to qualify her for the attainment of an earthly prize, than for the winning of that great after-stake, compared with which all the honours and distinctions of this world are as dust in the balance: not that her religious education, in the common formal sense of the phrase, had been unattended to, or that Sir Edmund and Lady de Beauvoir had been at any time of their lives irreligious per

also." Do entreat Mr Faulkner not to put such strange, absurd notions into the dear girl's head.' "But Sir Edmund only laughed as he replied No, indeed, my dear! I cannot promise to interfere between the uncle and niece. I cannot find in my heart to disturb the good understanding which subsists between them; and to tell you the truth-though Harry and I differ occasionally on some particular points-I have sometimes more than my doubts which will prove right in the end. That good brother of mine-would I were as good-will do Rosomond no harm, depend upon it; and if she does imbibe a few of his obsolete notions never fear-a London season will do wonders towards modifying them.'

"Lady de Beauvoir shook her head, but contented herself with privately lecturing her daughter; and as she really had an affectionate regard for my father, and too much respect for his intellectual superiority to enter the lists of argument with him, the family intercourse continued with undisturbed cordiality, and that especially between the uncle and niece flowed on in a quietly influential course, the result of which not in the slightest degree justified Lady de Beauvoir's apprehensions that her daughter would be unfitted for this world, though it may have been blessedly instrumental in training her for a better.

"I have observed that Rosomond, though in years and simplicity a child, was forward in person, and at fourteen, had shot up into such womanly stature, that a stranger might have supposed her twenty at first sight, though the mistake would have been rectified the moment she moved or spoke, by the still childlike graces of her every action, and the almost infantine sweetness of expression about her small dimpled mouth. In London she was of course secluded from general society, according to the strictest rules and regulations of the un-come-out noviciate; but in the country the system was not adhered to à la rigeur, and besides the undesired and unvalued honour of passing a formal hour with her governess in the drawingroom, on the evenings of dinner parties to country neighbours, or when a small circle of the élite was assembled at Hawkwood, she was indulged occasionally with her fill of dancing at a rural fête in the Park,

or a Christmas ball, when half the country were brought together beneath Sir Edmund's hospitable roof. On the latter occasions, the handsome suite of old-fashioned reception rooms was exceedingly crowded, and that appropriated to dancing almost to inconvenience; a fact which became strikingly apparent to Lady de Beauvoir as she followed the fairy footsteps of her daughter with maternal interest, impatient of the narrow limits and serried rank of dancers, so unfavourable for a display of her darling's graceful movements. As for Rosomond, she, thoughtless of gracefulness, was grace itself,' but delighting in the merry dance, she sometimes felt, while threading its involutions, that it would have been still more delightful, had there been freer space for her flying footsteps: and when Lady de Beauvoir appealed to her testimony in support of the representations she was making to my uncle, the gay artless girl exclaimed, O yes, indeed, papa! we were shockingly crowded last night. That awkward Mr Sullivan almost pushed me down in the poussettee; I'd rather by half dance on the lawnDo, dear papa, build a nice long room

three times as long as this,' and away she skimmed, humming a favourite dance, the whole length of the drawingroom and back, concluding her pas seul by a pirouette round her father's chair, and a kiss upon his forehead, before she settled herself again at the tambour frame, from which she had started up to perform this sudden evolution.

Let

"Well! I suppose it must be so,' said my uncle, smiling upon the dear thoughtless one with unutterable fondness Both in the conspiracy-mother and daughter. I have only to acquiesce, and submit to have the old house pulled about my ears, and all the horrors of brick and mortar. me see, Lady de Beauvoir! If we set this grand work in hand early in the ensuing summer-(this is April), the addition (as far as masonry goes) may be complete before winter-and then, allowing the requisite interval for dry. ing before the walls are hung-and the decorative work begun-the new room will be habitable by the spring following. Then, if I recollect right, we have settled that that young lady's presentation shall take place a month before she attains the mature age of