ingly perfectly at ease, sat Godfrey; and in the centre of the group, both erect and angular and fashionably clad, were Lady and Miss Thorold. The latter kindly came forward on beholding in the doorway the timid, nunlike figure, and took protecting hold of Molly's trembling hand.

"Miss Bloomfield, I must introduce you to my mother and the General."

"How are you, dear?" nodded Lady Thorold, touching the extended fingers lightly, and giving her a rather colder kiss than she would have done had Molly not kept her husband waiting for his dinner.

"I'm sorry I'm late, sir," Molly ventured to say, quaintly addressing herself to the General, whose red face, she fancied, wore not the pleasantest or most amiable of welcomes.

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'Well, you couldn't help it, I suppose," he said, gruffly, and stopped short.

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Godfrey," called out Miss Thorold, breaking in upon her cousin's peaceable perusal of his pet evening journal, "do you know we are all waiting for you? Here, Ma! why don't you attend to your duties? You needn't make faces, Thorold; I'll remedy the deficiency

-Captain Thorold Thorold-Miss Bloomfield." Instead of replying, Lady Thorold took her nephew's arm, and followed the lead taken by the General and Molly to the dining-room.

"I hope," spoke the old soldier, addressing himself to his wife, though Molly felt sure the words were meant as reproach to herself, "that the Julienne isn't spoilt. I hate burnt soup."

CHAPTER V.

MEAT AND MUSIC.

"How is it, I wonder, that old men are always greedy at least, almost always?" sighed Molly to herself, correcting the wrong done, but in thought, to her father. She had fixed her bright eye upon the General, from whose thick grey moustache hung little globules of soup. The few words she had chanced to hear on entering the room were resting in her memory. They had taken her appetite away; she felt timid, nervous, awkward. Not inclined to talk, she could only stare and observe. "It must be very dreadful to grow old," she ruminated. "I suppose one can't be greedy if one isn't rich. The Perkins are not greedy, and I'm sure papa doesn't care what he eats; and the Ogdens"-you see Molly was running through the Blatchingtonians— "Mrs Ogden would perhaps be nicer if she were just a little greedy; and, after all, her husband likes good things." Good things!

Well, yes, Mistress Molly. Who can blame him ? If he care for his good things-a glass of Madeira and a pheasant, occasionally counted luxuries-haven't you likewise your partialities, of a different description, but equally enjoyable? What are rich soups and rare turbot to misses of your age? All the palatial delicacies in the world are outweighed by à moment's badinage with a favoured swain; all the vines of the South, all the oysters of the Texel, cannot hold their own against the delights of the "Mabel" or "Les Roses."

Poor Molly's gaiety and visiting had hitherto been of a simple kind ;-a dance now and then in the respectable best-room of a neighbouring farmhouse, or a cup of theological tea at the parson's, or a “party' which meant muffins and crampets at the good old maiden sisters who lived in the spic and span house in Broad Street. Yet those evenings had all been brighter and more homely than this dull dinner-dull in the glare of silver and numerous lights and red geraniums. She felt like a fish out of water. The servant protruded dishes over her shoulder, and she took of everything because she was

VOL. I.

E

too timid to shake her head, and verily tasted nothing, for she was too confused to eat. There sat her bête noire, the gruff General, doing justice to the entremets and viands handed round, silent and upright; opposite were Miss Selina, who seemed in a meditative mood, and the stranger, in his faultless white bow, and his jewels and pomade, pouring into his neighbour's unsympathetic ear his birdlike chit-chat of new books, his information alarmingly multifarious; howbeit he shot many an admiring glance in the direction of the rustic beauty to whom he was placed vis-à-vis. Lady Thorold regarded. the group complacently from the head of the table, now and then addressing a word to Captain Thorold, or to Godfrey Sterne, looking majestic in his eveningdress, or mildly beseeching her husband to "try" one or other of her cook's confections.

"There are two things I object to emphatically," said Godfrey Sterne, breaking the silence that had crept upon the party, speaking in measured tones.

"Bread!" called out the General.

"More ice!" at the same time from Captain Thorold.