This was by no means the first time her enthusiastic cousin had backed her own logic by allusion to the opinions of a dear and valued friend. She dared not exclaim, in the language of her Majesty's faithful Commons, "Name! name!" -But her curiosity was not the less lively. She could not help suspecting,-at eighteen the imagination is volatile,—that Hilda's contempt for foppery, or rather, for every thing less than positive in this world of necessities, was quite as much attributable to the anonymous philosopher, as to the father concerning whose injured memory she was so susceptible. Her cogitations were luckily interrupted by a loud clattering of hunting-boots along the corridor; and the sound of her name too noisily invoked for any lips short of those of a schoolboy-brother. "Netta, Netta! where are you? where have you hid yourself?-Such a day's sport!Such a burst !-Such a run !"-Then, after a vehement tapping at the door of his cousin Hilda's dressing-room, and a hurried "May I come in?" that waited for no answer, - in rushed the mud-stained boy, holding in his hand a fox's brush, that bore evident signs of recent amputation. "Good morning, Hilda.-Darling Nettums, did you ever see such a beauty ?—What Berty Grandison calls a plume for a Tambour Major! -And such a tag !-I've a right to be proud of it, for I promise you I won it like a trump. Tiger carried me—no matter—keep your eye on 'Bell's Life' next Sunday, and you'll find news of us." Miss Wraysbury knew by experience that she had no alternative but to take the bleeding trophy cheerfully into her hand, without remonstrating against the nature of the Sunday studies provided for her. The philosophy of submission to the more savage sex had reached her by virtue of Pennington descent. "I mean to send it to town and get it mounted for you, with a beautiful ivory handle," resumed Harry, on receiving back from her hands the unsavoury trophy." That is, on condition that you hang it up beside your whiprack, and don't pretend to pass it off as Won by no hands as you may guess, Or worse still, degrade it as that cut and dry utilitarian Professor Avesford did the one I brought you two years ago (as a tribute from poor Berty), by using it to dust the keys of your piano." "Noch ein!"-observed Miss Wroughton, half aside to her cousin, smiling at this family manifestation in favour of the dulce over the utile. But Netta shook her head. She would not, even in jest, hear of classing a fox's brush, though even mounted on the richest of ivory handles, under the head of artistic treasures. CHAPTER XI. "UNCLE," said Edgar to Lord Dinton, as they were trudging together through the woods adjoining the Castle a few days afterwards, attended by a couple of keepers and a Clumber spaniel and setter or two, and better still, by a cheering winter sun,-" if you do not interfere a little, at Harrals, they will spoil our Netta for us !"— "Not they!" replied the Earl, not a little amused by this sudden start. "But how can you answer for it,—you, who notice just now nothing that passes on the face of the earth, out of the parlour at Denny Cross ?" "A sad account of me, Edgar. But I know thus much of what passes in a higher sphere:that GOD takes care of his own. Such a nature as Janetta Wraysbury's was not created to be so readily spoiled. The seeds of mischief, if sown, would not germinate.—But what do you see so very terrible in progress at Harrals ?" "I have no opportunity of seeing any thing. Since the arrival of the Wroughtons, I have been so systematically snubbed, that I have raised the siege and marched off my troops. I seldom go there now:-never, except for a gossip with Harry." "It is from him, then, you gather your information ?" 66 'It does not amount to more than that those two young girls mew themselves up all day long over their German and counterpoint ;-Schiller, in the study, then Bach, at the old organ." "So far, no great harm," said Lord Dinton, |