etations!"

"I certainly must disclaim your paneygric. I had one hallucination,
if so you term it,--it was that you wished, ardently wished, for the
position which a foreign 'mission' bestows. A very natural wish, I
freely own, in one so worthy in every way to grace and adorn it."

"Well, so I did some time back, but I 've changed my mind. I don't think
I should like it; I have been reconsidering the subject."

"And your Ladyship inclines now rather to seclusion and rural pleasures;
how fortunate that I should have been able to serve your interests there
also."

"What do you mean?" said she, with a stare, while a deep scarlet
suffused her cheek.

"I alluded to a country visit which you fancied might be made so
agreeably, but which his Lordship had the bad taste to regard less
favorably."

"Well, sir, you did not presume to give any opinion?"

"I really did. I had all the hardihood to brave Lord Kilgoff's
most fixed resolves. You were aware that he declined Mr. Cashel's
invitation?"

She nodded, and he went on,--

"Probably, too, knowing the reasons for that refusal?"

"No, sir; the matter was indifferent to me, so I never troubled my head
about it. My Lord said we shouldn't go, and I said, 'Very well,' and
there it ended."

Now, although this was spoken with a most admirably feigned
indifference, Linton was too shrewd an observer not to penetrate the
deception.

"I am doubly unlucky this day," said he, at last, "first to employ all
my artifices to plan a ministerial success to which you are actually
averse, and secondly, to carry a point to which you are indifferent."

"Dare I ask, if the question be not an indiscreet one, what peculiar
interest Mr. Linton can have, either in our acceptance or refusal of
this invitation?"

"Have I not said that I believed you desired it?" replied he, with a
most meaning look.

"Indeed you read inclinations most skilfully, only that you interpret
them by anticipation."

"This is too much," said Linton, in a voice whose passionate earnestness
showed that all dissimulation was at an end, "far too much! The genteel
comedy that we play before the world, madam, might be laid aside for a
few moments here. When I asked for this interview, and you consented to
give it--"

"It was on the express stipulation that you should treat me as you do
in society, sir," broke she in--"that there should be no attempt to fall
back upon an intimacy which can never be resumed."

"When