ld beam of a sarcastic laugh. Spoiled
darling of the world as she was, she seemed so innocent in her exuberant
happiness that one forgot all her faults in that atmosphere of joy which
she diffused around her. And despite her pretty insolence, she had so
kind a woman's heart below the surface! When she once saw that she had
pained you, she was so soft, so winning, so humble, till she had healed
the wound. But then, if she saw she had pleased you too much, the little
witch was never easy till she had plagued you again. As heiress to so
rich a father, or rather perhaps mother (for the fortune came from
Lady Ellinor), she was naturally surrounded with admirers not wholly
disinterested. She did right to plague them; but Me! Poor boy that I
was, why should I seem more disinterested than others; how should
she perceive all that lay hid in my young deep heart? Was I not in
all--worldly pretensions the least worthy of her admirers, and might I
not seem, therefore, the most mercenary,--I, who never thought of her
fortune, or if that thought did come across me, it was to make me start
and turn pale? And then it vanished at her first glance, as a ghost from
the dawn. How hard it is to convince youth, that sees all the world of
the future before it, and covers that future with golden palaces, of the
inequalities of life! In my fantastic and sublime romance I looked
out into that Great Beyond, saw myself orator, statesman, minister,
ambassador,--Heaven knows what,--laying laurels, which I mistook for
rent-rolls, at Fanny's feet.

Whatever Fanny might have discovered as to the state of my heart,
it seemed an abyss not worth prying into by either Trevanion or Lady
Ellinor. The first, indeed, as may be supposed, was too busy to think of
such trifles. And Lady Ellinor treated me as a mere boy,--almost like a
boy of her own, she was so kind to me. But she did not notice much the
things that lay immediately around her. In brilliant conversation with
poets, wits, and statesmen, in sympathy with the toils of her husband
or proud schemes for his aggrandizement, Lady Ellinor lived a life of
excitement. Those large, eager, shining eyes of hers, bright with some
feverish discontent, looked far abroad, as if for new worlds to conquer;
the world at her feet escaped from her vision. She loved her daughter,
she was proud of her, trusted in her with a superb repose; she did not
watch over her. Lady Ellinor stood alone on a mountain and amidst a
cloud