r his heart deeply smitten by her charms; for he is now very happy,
very much attached to another young lady, to whom he proposed three
days ago, at Lady Delafield's, and not to make a mystery of what all our
little world will know before tomorrow, that young lady is my daughter
Jane."

"Were I acquainted with Mr. Sumner, I should offer to him my sincere
congratulations."

Mrs. Poyntz resumed, without heeding a reply more complimentary to Miss
Jane than to the object of her choice,--

"I told you that I meant Jane to marry a rich country gentleman, and
Ashleigh Sumner is the very country gentleman I had then in my thoughts.
He is cleverer and more ambitious than I could have hoped; he will be a
minister some day, in right of his talents, and a peer, if he wishes it,
in right of his lands. So that matter is settled."

There was a pause, during which my mind passed rapidly through links
of reminiscence and reasoning, which led me to a mingled sentiment of
admiration for Mrs. Poyntz as a diplomatist and of distrust for Mrs.
Poyntz as a friend. It was now clear why Mrs. Poyntz, before so little
disposed to approve my love, had urged me at once to offer my hand to
Lilian, in order that she might depart affianced and engaged to the
house in which she would meet Mr. Ashleigh Sumner. Hence Mrs. Poyntz's
anxiety to obtain all the information I could afford her of the sayings
and doings at Lady Haughton's; hence, the publicity she had so suddenly
given to my engagement; hence, when Mr. Sumner had gone away a rejected
suitor, her own departure from L----; she had seized the very moment
when a vain and proud man, piqued by the mortification received from
one lady, falls the easier prey to the arts which allure his suit to
another. All was so far clear to me. And I--was my self-conceit less
egregious and less readily duped than that of yon glided popinjay's!
How skilfully this woman had knitted me into her work with the noiseless
turn of her white hands! and yet, forsooth, I must vaunt the superior
scope of my intellect, and plumb all the fountains of Nature,--I, who
could not fathom the little pool of this female schemer's mind!

But that was no time for resentment to her or rebuke to myself. She was
now the woman who could best protect and save from slander my innocent,
beloved Lilian. But how approach that perplexing subject?

Mrs. Poyntz approached it, and with her usual decision of purpose, which
bore so deceitful a liken