"BILSTON! as you would have taken care to know, had you pursued this affair with the seriousness it deserves. Don't shrug your shoulders, George! You are not in a situation to trifle with your prospects in life. A momentary flush of money has turned your head. But you know very well it can't last. Your father has left you little scope for extravagance. The Jews will soon be as illdisposed to deal with you as with him."

A sigh, almost amounting to a groan, admitted George Joddrell's cognizance of the fact.

"And here is a girl whose fortune would place you completely at ease!"-pursued Lady Hillingdon, warming with the subject. "By securing her you secure Melton, Newmarket, the Moors, hunters, hacks, a yacht, a team, excursions to Paris"

"I rather think I could make out a better list than yours, of the whims and fancies my heiress is to gratify! Heigho!-I suppose

VOL. II.

F

then I must undertake the arduous duties of

country courtship! But pray write word to

the old fellow at Hindon, mother, that I shall

may

brush up

his

be of your party, that he establishment; for when I was last there, the stabling was not fit for a sandman's jackass! I will speak to Curlewis about getting me up something of a costume fit for a country quizzery.—I'm afraid my Moor equipments would not be exactly the thing for playing Sir Charles Grandison at Millstone Park!"

CHAPTER V.

What shall I say I have done? It must be a very plausive invention that carries it. They begin to smoke me; and disgraces have of late knocked too often at my door. ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.

Ir might have served to console poor old Mr and Mrs Corbet for the unfilial indifference of their daughter on approaching the home of her childhood, as well as for the crafty designs of George, to know with what delight the visit was anticipated by their kindlier hearted granddaughters.

Mary and Agatha, estranged so long from the shade of the ancient avenues of Hillingdon Hall, and reared in the stony desart of Brighton where the trees are grown in flowerpots and the very weeds savour of surf,

thirsted after the country, as the captive in a dungeon after light. The most trifling incidents of rural life were for them replete with interest. Haymaking was a beauty and a mystery; and the sight of a squirrel leaping from bough to bough, exceeded all the displays of the Zoological Gardens.

Lady Hillingdon was ashamed of the interest with which, in spite of the perplexing velocity of a fast train, they gazed upon the flying landscape; and but that George was repaying himself by a nap of half-a-dozen hours' duration, for having been up till daylight every night of the preceding month, their cockneyism would have brought down a severe rebuke from their brother.

Old Corbet, meanwhile, was enjoying with all his surviving faculties, the prospect of uniting his family under his roof, for the first time since the marriage of Lady Hillingdon. Either to punish the great lady for her London slights, or repay her own obliga

tions in Portland place, his daughter Charlotte had persuaded him to extend his invitation to the Clutterbucks; and though the wealthy London merchant possessed too sturdy a spirit of independence to seek the society of those by whose ungraciousness he felt insulted, he satisfied himself with pleading stress of business as an excuse for nonacceptance; and reluctantly sanctioned the desire of his wife and daughters, who were just then rampant in spirits from family circumstances of an unprecedented nature, to meet their cousins on ground where coldness was impossible.

On arriving at the Manor, therefore, (the approach to which, Lady Hillingdon surveyed with a sort of shuddering wonder, both as to how she had managed to vegetate there for the first sixteen years of her life, and how she and her son would manage to vegetate there for sixteen days to come,)-the first object that met her eyes was the full-blown form of