visitor at the house, and very
shortly a declared lover--that their intimacy from childhood had
accustomed his eye to her want of personal charms--she had become
endeared to him by her mild and submissive temper. So little was she
aware of her father's testamentary dispositions in her favour, that
the interested nature of Lord Robert's views did not occur to her
mind; and, little accustomed to protestations of attachment, Selina's
heart was not _very_ difficult to soften towards the only man who had
ever pretended to love her, and whose apparent attachment promised
some consolation for the loss of her sister's society, as well as the
chance of reunion with one whom her father had sworn should never,
under any possible circumstances, again cross his threshold.

Six months after General Stanley's pride had been wounded to the quick
by the newspaper account of a marriage between his favourite child and
"a man of the name of Sparks," balm was poured into the wound by
another and more pompous paragraph, announcing the union, by special
license, of the Right Hon. Lord Robert Stanley and the eldest daughter
and heiress of Lieut.-Gen. Stanley, of Stanley Manor, only son of the
late Lord Henry Stanley, followed by the usual list of noble relatives
gracing the ceremony with their presence, and a flourishing account of
the departure of the happy couple, in a travelling carriage and four,
for their seat in Cheshire.

This announcement, by the way, probably served to convey the
intelligence to Mr and Mrs Everard Sparks; for the General having
carefully intercepted every letter addressed by Mary to her sister,
Lady Robert had not the slightest idea in what direction to
communicate with one who possessed an undiminished share in her
affections.

On General Stanley's arrival in Cheshire, at the close of the
honeymoon, the most casual observer might have noticed the alteration
which had taken place in his appearance. Instead of the sadness I had
expected to find in his countenance after so severe a stroke as the
disobedience of his darling girl, I never saw him so exulting. Yet his
smiles were not smiles of good-humour. There was bitterness at the
bottom of every word he uttered; and a terrible sound of menace rung
in his unnatural laughter. Consciousness never seemed a moment absent
from his mind, that he had defeated the calculations of the designing
family; that he had distanced them; that he was triumphing over them.
Alas! none