old, the novel for unfulfilled prophecy; and was
a distinguished leader in a distinguished religious coterie: but she
still prided herself upon having a green head upon grey shoulders; and
not without reason; for underneath all the worldliness and intrigue,
and petty affectation of girlishness, which she contrived to jumble
in with her religiosity, beat a young and kindly heart. So she was
charmed with Mr. Vavasour's manners, and commended them much to Lucia,
who, a shrinking girl of seventeen, was peeping at her first season
from under Lady Knockdown's sheltering wing.

"Me dear, let Mr. Vavasour be who he will, he has not only the
intellect of a true genius, but what is a great deal better for
practical purposes; that is, the manners of one. Give me the man
who will let a woman of our rank say what we like to him, without
supposing that he may say what he likes in return; and considers one's
familiarity as an honour, and not as an excuse for taking liberties. A
most agreeable contrast, indeed, to the young men of the present
day; who come in their shooting jackets, and talk slang to their
partners,--though really the girls are just as bad,--and stand with
their backs to the fire, and smell of smoke, and go to sleep after
dinner, and pay no respect to old age, nor to youth either, I think.
'Pon me word, Lucia, the answers I've heard young gentlemen make to
young ladies, this very season,--they'd have been called out the
next morning in my time, me dear. As for the age of chivalry, nobody
expects that to be restored: but really one might have been spared the
substitute for it which, we had when I was young, in the grand air of
the old school. It was a 'sham,' I daresay, as they call everything
now-a-days: but really, me dear, a pleasant sham is better to live
with than an unpleasant reality, especially when it smells of cigars."

So it befell that Elsley Vavasour was asked to Lady Knockdown's, and
that there he fell in love with Lucia, and Lucia fell in love with
him.

The next winter, old Lord Knockdown, who had been decrepit for some
years past, died; and his widow, whose income was under five hundred
a year,--for the estates were entailed, and mortgaged, and everything
else which can happen to an Irish property,--came to live with her
nephew, Lord Scoutbush, in Eaton Square, and take such care as she
could of Lucia and Valencia.

So, after a dreary autumn and winter of parting and silence, Elsley
found himself