ails to do, where only affectation is the pretence. Adroitly avoiding
to press the question, he adverted to Baden and its dreary weather;
offered his books, his newspapers, his horses, his phaeton, and
everything that was his, even his companionship as a guide to the best
riding or walking roads, and, like a clever actor, made his exit at the
very moment when his presence became most desirable.

Lady Hester looked out of the window, and saw, in the street beneath,
the saddle-horses of the colonel, which were led up and down by a
groom in the most accurate of costumes. The nags themselves, too, were
handsome and in top condition. It was a little gleam of civilization,
in the midst of universal barrenness, that brought up memories, some of
which at least were not devoid of pain, so far as the expression of her
features might be trusted. "I wonder who he can be?" said she, musing.
"It's a shocking name! Haggerstone. Perhaps Sir Stafford may remember
him. It's very sad to think that one should be reduced to such people."
So, with a slight sigh, she sat down to indulge in a mood of deep and
sincere commiseration for herself and her sorrows.

From these reveries she was aroused by the arrival of a package of books
and papers from the colonel. They included some of the latest things of
the day, both French and English, and were exactly the kind of reading
she cared for, that half-gossipry that revolves around a certain set,
and busies itself about the people and incidents of one very small
world. There were books of travel by noble authors, and novels by titled
authoresses; the one as tamely well bred and tiresome as the others were
warm and impassioned, no bad corroborative evidence, by the way, of
the French maxim, that the "safety of the Lady Georginas has an immense
relation to the coldness of the Lord Georges." There were books of
beauty, wherein loveliness was most aristocratic; and annuals where
nobility condescended to write twaddle. There were analyses of new
operas, wherein the list of the spectators was the only matter of
interest, and better than these were the last fashions of "Longchamps,"
the newest bulletins of that great campaign which began in Adam's
garden, and will endure to the "very crack of doom."

Lady Hester's spirits rallied at once from these well-timed stimulants;
and when the party gathered together before dinner, George and his
sister were amazed at the happy change in her manner.

"I have had