be of any service in escorting you, command me." But to this arrangement, Lady Margaret, influenced it may be by her own principles of returning prudence, demurred. They should meet, at any rate, she merely observed, and Mr. Ravensworth must give himself no further trouble upon their account.

This celebrated ball, the most brilliant, perhaps of any other assembly of the season, quite realised the expectations of Constance. She was herself in excellent spirits. The company, distinguished as it was, was numerous; yet not too much so. Dudley Ravensworth was a partner in the dance very much to her mind; nor need we add, that he had long since obtained that degree of interest in her heart which makes memory and hope sisters in joy.

During the drive home, Lady Margaret took care to express how very much she disapproved of the manner in which Constance wasted her time on a detrimental, as she called

all younger brothers. Mr. Ravensworth she allowed was very well to dance with, once or so during the evening; but to devote herself to him was, to say the least of it, very injudicious. It was unprofitable, fruitless; and had not Constance unconsciously dropped during the long mentorian harangue into a kind of slumber, the happy pleasures of the evening were likely to have ended in many painful and perplexing reflections.

It is now time, however, to introduce more particularly to our readers the party who had thus accidentally encountered the young militaire on the day appointed for the general thanksgiving at St. Paul's. The family of Sir Alexander and Lady Margaret Graham consisted of an only child, Constance Graham. Lady Margaret herself, descended from a dynasty of antediluvian lords, which boasted itself uncontaminated by the mixture of plebeian blood, was the daughter of a Scotch Earl, poor

and proud-a common alliance; and having been disappointed in her first love, had condescended to attach herself to the semi-nobility of a baronet. Imperious in manner, with a proud and commanding spirit, she possessed a pedigree mania to an alarming extent. Rigid and censorious in her judgment of others; wholly destitute of feeling, and exquisitely precise in all the forms of life (never having herself swerved the millionth fraction of an inch from the rectilinear routine of exact propriety); selfish and narrow-minded, her charity was entirely passive, consisting of a few expressions of surprise and sympathy. She had contrived even from her childhood to have her own way; in a word, she had governed her parents, her relations, her husband, and now exercised a strict and uncompromising discipline over her daughter. Her discourse was peremptory, her gait ungainly, and she drew out the thread of her verbosity finer than the staple of her

argument. Her ambition had been to reign as a star of fashion, and she had attained that eminence by banishing all traces of heart from her proceedings, and by keeping aloof from every one, whether bound by the ties of blood or gratitude, that was not admitted into the exclusive circle of fashionable life.

Lady Margaret was a most expert chaperon; her tactics in a ball-room were pre-eminently conspicuous. She had the art of walking the room so as to shun all bores and detrimentals,— only fit to call carriages, and get boas and shawls, and to encounter (by chance) all the eligibles. She was ever ready with excuses of "headaches," ""uneven floors," "heat of rooms," "carriage called," " sprained ancle," or any other impromptu afflictions, when a younger son presumed to ask Constance to dance.

Sir Alexander himself was one of those good kind of every-day men, of which genus we have more in the world than of any other.

He was good-tempered, till fretted-liberal, till forced to calculate his income with reference to his expenses; good-hearted, open, and hospitable to those with whom he wished to be well; and very cold—absolutely frigid towards those with whom, like Orlando, he desired to "be better strangers." In short, Sir Alexander Graham was one of the common lot; though for the honour of humanity, he had ever proved himself a most excellent husband, and a most affectionate, as well as at all times a very exemplary father.

Graham castle was an old Norman fortress, occupying the summit of a gently rising ground in the middle of an extensive range of pasture ground or chace. The outward fortifications, together with a majestic river encircling it on the west and north, had made it, according to the mode of warfare then in use, an almost impregnable place of strength. It was encompassed by a high wall, six feet in thick