ret away from her kind. For days and weeks past, had not
this old Maria made fools of the whole house,--Maria, the butt of the
family?

I forbear to go into too curious inquiries regarding the Lady Maria's
antecedents. I have my own opinion about Madame Bernstein's. A hundred
years ago people of the great world were not so straitlaced as they
are now, when everybody is good, pure, moral, modest; when there is no
skeleton in anybody's closet; when there is no scheming; no slurring
over old stories; when no girl tries to sell herself for wealth, and no
mother abets her. Suppose my Lady Maria tries to make her little game,
wherein is her ladyship's great eccentricity?

On these points no doubt the Baroness de Bernstein thought, as she
communed with herself in her private apartment.

CHAPTER XVIII. An Old Story

As my Lady Castlewood and her son and daughter passed through one
door of the saloon where they had all been seated, my Lord Castlewood
departed by another issue; and then the demure eyes looked up from the
tambour-frame on which they had persisted hitherto in examining the
innocent violets and jonquils. The eyes looked up at Harry Warrington,
who stood at an ancestral portrait under the great fireplace. He had
gathered a great heap of blushes (those flowers which bloom so rarely
after gentlefolks' springtime), and with them ornamented his honest
countenance, his cheeks, his forehead, nay, his youthful ears.

"Why did you refuse to go with our aunt, cousin?" asked the lady of the
tambour frame.

"Because your ladyship bade me stay," answered the lad.

"I bid you stay! La! child! What one says in fun, you take in earnest!
Are all you Virginian gentlemen so obsequious as to fancy every idle
word a lady says is a command? Virginia must be a pleasant country for
our sex if it be so!"

"You said--when--when we walked in the terrace two nights since,--O
heaven!" cried Harry, with a voice trembling with emotion.

"Ah, that sweet night, cousin!" cries the Tambour-frame.

"Whe--whe--when you gave me this rose from your own neck,"--roared
out Harry, pulling suddenly a crumpled and decayed vegetable from his
waistcoat--"which I will never part with--with, no, by heavens, whilst
this heart continues to beat! You said, 'Harry, if your aunt asks you
to go away, you will go, and if you go, you will forget me.'--Didn't you
say so?"

"All men forget!" said the Virgin, with a sigh.

"In this cold selfish countr