ases fall in? I am told they
are very low now!"

"I believe not," said the other. "He has enough, and is willing others,
should prosper. But there is Clara, with her little boy--is he not a
lovely child?" cried the grandmother, rising to take the infant in her
arms.

"Oh! excessively beautiful!" said the dowager, looking the other way, and
observing Catharine making a movement towards Lord Henry Stapleton, she
called to her. "Lady Herriefield--come this way, my dear--I wish to speak
to you."

Kate obeyed with a sullen pout of her pretty lip, and entered into some
idle discussion about a cap, though her eyes wandered round the rooms in
listless vacancy.

The dowager had the curse of bad impressions in youth to contend with, and
labored infinitely harder now to make her daughter act right, than
formerly she had ever done to make her act wrong.

"Here! uncle Benfield," cried Emily, with a face glowing with health and
animation, as she approached his seat with a glass in her hands. "Here is
the negus you wished; I have made it myself, and you will praise it of
course."

"Oh! my dear Lady Pendennyss," said the old gentleman, rising politely
from his seat to receive the beverage: "you are putting yourself to a
great deal of trouble for an old bachelor like me; too much indeed, too
much."

"Old bachelors are sometimes more esteemed than young one," cried the earl
gaily, joining them in time to hear this speech. "Here is my friend, Mr.
Peter Johnson; who knows when we may dance at his wedding?"

"My lord, and my lady, and my honored master," said Peter gravely, in
reply, bowing respectfully where he stood, waiting to take his master's
glass--"I am past the age to think of a wife: I am seventy-three coming
next 'lammas, counting by the old style."

"What do you intend to do with your three hundred a year," said Emily with
a smile, "unless you bestow it on some good woman, for making the evening
of your life comfortable?'

"My lady--hem--my lady," said the steward, blushing, "I had a little
thought, with your kind ladyship's consent, as I have no-relations, chick
or child in the world, what to do with it."

"I should be happy to hear your plan," said the countess, observing that
the steward was anxious to communicate something.

"Why, my lady, if my lord and my honored master's agreeable, I did think
of making another codicil to master's will in order to dispose of it."

"Your master's will," said the earl laughi