was groundless and unjust. Sir Miles had never encouraged the
expectations which Vernon's family and himself had unthinkingly formed.
The baronet was master of his own fortune, and after all, was it not
more natural that he should prefer the child he had brought up and
reared, to a distant relation, little more than an acquaintance, simply
because man succeeded to man in the mouldy pedigree of the St. Johns?
And, Mary fairly lost to him, his constitutional indifference to money,
a certain French levity of temper, a persuasion that his life was
nearing its wasted close, had left him without regret, as without
resentment, at his kinsman's decision. His boyish affection for the
hearty, generous old gentleman returned, and though he abhorred the
country, he had, without a single interested thought or calculation,
cordially accepted the baronet's hospitable overtures, and deserted, for
the wilds of Hampshire, "the sweet shady side of Pall-Mall."

We may now enter the drawing-room at Laughton, in which were already
assembled several of the families residing in the more immediate
neighbourhood, and who sociably dropped in to chat around the national
tea-table, play a rubber at whist, or make up, by the help of two or
three children and two or three grandpapas, a merry country-dance; for
in that happy day people were much more sociable than they are now in
the houses of our rural Thanes. Our country seats became bustling and
animated after the Birthday; many even of the more important families
resided, indeed, all the year round on their estates. The Continent was
closed to us; the fastidious exclusiveness which comes from habitual
residence in cities had not made that demarcation, in castes and in
talk, between neighbour and neighbour, which exists now. Our squires
were less educated, less refined, but more hospitable and unassuming.
In a word, there was what does not exist now, except in some districts
remote from London,--a rural society for those who sought it.

The party, as we enter, is grouped somewhat thus. But first we must cast
a glance at the room itself, which rarely failed to be the first object
to attract a stranger's notice. It was a long, and not particularly
well-proportioned apartment,--according, at least, to modern
notions,--for it had rather the appearance of two rooms thrown into one.
At the distance of about thirty-five feet, the walls, before somewhat
narrow, were met by an arch, supported by carved pil