remain inviolate. Even Sir John was shocked by the impetuous way in which she rushed down. into the hall to welcome her aunt, before the great portals were closed, to exclude a volley of wind which compelled her to embrace a great deal of damp crape veil, as well as her new relative.

Mrs. Wroughton was leaning on her brother's arm. But whose could be the slim figure, taller than either herself or Netta, also arrayed in solemn black? Was it the little child's governess,

or attendant?-No! the little child herself;Hilda Wroughton,-no votary of dolls,—but a beautiful girl of seventeen!

How surprised and how pleased was Harry Wraysbury's glance at his sister that day across the dinner-table !-Not with the feelings of admiration or exultation in the beauty of their new relative that might have inspired her cousins Edgar or Olave. But because relieved from the anxiety uppermost in his mind, that with a little girl established in the house, governesses

and school-rooms were inevitable. And of all the detestations his warmth of heart had ever allowed him to cherish, was the perpendicular preceptress who had presided over the early martyrdom of Netta.-He took less heed than his father or sister of the surpassing beauty of Miss Wroughton; but thanked goodness that a young lady of her inches must be sufficiently stored with grammar, geography, and the use of the globes, to dispense with tuition.

In Sir John, however, the surprise arising from his niece's distinction of air was not of a nature altogether agreeable. Not that he was jealous in behalf of his daughter. The representative of Adam Wraysbury was not the man to imagine that a new Helen would be capable of entering into competition with the heiress of Lynchcombe.

But he was sorry to see so little of the Woolston exhibited in her person; and if, in moral qualities as well as appearance, she should take after her scamp of a father?-If her mind

should be as crooked as her form was erect?If, with the delicately defined nostril, the oval face, the fine forehead, the long black eyelashes, that brought Wroughton painfully before him, she should combine his insidious obliquity of character?

He almost trembled at the idea, as with downcast eyes poor Hilda sat, overpowered by the splendours and numerous attendance of the dinner service. It was with difficulty, indeed,

that the kindly efforts of

torted a word from her.

Miss Wraysbury ex

This cousin certainly

seemed to make up in taciturnity for the garrulous propensities of Edgar and Harry.

The latter, luckily, talked for them all; of what and whom he had seen that morning at the meet, and what and whom he had not seen; and how, young Molyneux, being among the latter, he had made up his mind to ride to the Castle the following day, and invite Edgar to come and help him shoot the pheasants. "Somers, the head-keeper, had informed him that the season

was advancing, and that the birds must be shot

down.”

To this, the first demonstration on the part of the future Woolston of Harrals, his father would probably have opposed a slight remonstrance, but that on the day of his sister's inauguration, and while the travellers still looked so weary from their journey, he was unwilling to cast a further gloom on their spirits.-The young Etonian, therefore, was allowed to rattle

on;

his sister being probably the only person present who referred his high spirits to his buoyant age; and saw in his fine open, sparkling countenance, indications of a thousand virtues. She longed to learn what Lord Dinton and Uncle Farmer thought of her handsome, animated Harry.-But not half so much as she longed for the means of making up her own mind concerning her beautiful but over-ceremonious cousin.

CHAPTER X.

WHILE these changes were progressing at Harrals, poor old Denny Cross was undergoing a process of transmutation equally important.When Christmas arrived, to clothe the humble old village church with branches of laurustinus and holly, and the grateful village poor with linsey-wolsey and frieze, presented (as a thankoffering, perhaps,) by Lord Dinton,-only two months of his probation remained to be accomplished. The late Earl had died in August. In February-the month sacred to St. Valentine, there was to be a new Countess in the county.