ard,
bitter feelings which suggested them.

Another hour, and, clasped in each others' arms, they were sleeping as
sweetly as though no breath of this world's bitterness had ever blown
upon their hearts, or stirred them into momentary strife.

Peace to their slumbers, and sweet dreams!

It was, perhaps, an hour or two after noon, and the early dinner of
the time was already over, when the two sisters strolled out into the
gardens, unaccompanied, except by a tall old greyhound, Blanche's
peculiar friend and guardian, and some two or three beautiful
silky-haired King Charles spaniels.

After loitering for a little while among the trim parterres, and
box-edged terraces, and gathering a few sweet summer flowers, they
turned to avoid the heat, which was excessive, into the dark elm
avenue, and wandered along between the tall black yew hedges, linked
arm-in-arm, indeed, but both silent and abstracted, and neither of
them conscious of the rich melancholy music of the nightingales, which
was ringing all around them in that pleasant solitude.

Both, indeed, were buried in deep thought; and each, perhaps, for the
first time in her life, felt that her thought was such that she could
not, dared not, communicate it to her sister.

For Blanche Fitz-Henry had, on the previous night, began, for the
first time in her life, to suspect that she was the owner, for the
time being, of a commodity called a heart, although it may be that the
very suspicion proved in some degree that the possession was about to
pass, if it were not already passing, from her.

In sober seriousness, it must be confessed that the young cornet of
the Life Guards, although he had made so little impression on her to
whom he had devoted his attentions, had produced an effect different
from any thing which she had ever fell before on the mind of the elder
sister. It was not his good mien, nor his noble air that had struck
her; for though he was a well-made, fine-looking man, of graceful
manners, and high-born carriage, there were twenty men in the room
with whom he could not for five minutes have sustained a comparison in
point of personal appearance.

His friend, the Viscount St. George, to whom she had lent but a cold
ear, was a far handsomer man. Nor was it his wit and gay humor, and
easy flow of conversation, that had captivated her fancy; although she
certainly did think him the most agreeable man she had ever listened
to. No, it was the under-current of