discussion with the mason over the yawning boiler, the Earl referring to his son's letter, holding it half-a-yard off, and at last giving it to Mary to decipher by the waning light.
So far had it waned, that when the fixtures had all been inspected, Lord Ormersfield declared that the young ladies must not return alone, and insisted on escorting them home. Every five minutes some one thought of something to say: there was an answer, and by good luck a rejoinder; then all died away, and Mary pondered how her mother would in her place have done something to draw the two together, but she could not. She feared the walk had made Isabel more adverse to all connected with Ormersfield than even previously; for the Ormersfield road was avoided, and the question as to Fitzjocelyn's merits was never renewed.
Mary thought his cause would be safest in the hands of his great champion, who was coming home from Oxford with him, and was to occupy his vacation in acting tutor to little Sir Walter Conway. Louis came, the day after his return, with his father, to make visits in the Terrace, and was as well-behaved and uninteresting as morning calling could make him. He was looking very well-his general health quite restored, and his ankle much better; though he was still forbidden to ride, and could not walk far.
'You must come and see me, Aunt Kitty,' he said; 'I am not available for coming in to see you. I'm reading, and I've made a resignation of myself,' he added, with a slight blush, and debonnaire shrug, glancing to see that his father was occupied with James.
They were to dine with Lady Conway on the following Tuesday. In the interim, no one beheld them except Jem, who walked to Ormersfield once or twice for some skating for his little pupil Walter, and came back reporting that Louis had sold himself, body and soul, to his father.
Clara came home, a degree more civilized, and burning to confide to Louis that she had thought of his advice, had been the less miserable for it, and had much more on which to consult him. She could not conceive why even grandmamma would not consent to her accompanying the skaters; though she was giving herself credit for protesting that she was not going on the ice, only to keep poor Louis company, while the others were skating.
She was obliged to defer her hopes of seeing him until Tuesday, when she had been asked to drink tea in the school-room, and appear in the evening. Mrs. Frost had consented, as a means of exempting herself from the party. And Clara's incipient feminine nature began to flutter at her first gaiety. The event was magnified by a present from Jem, of a broad rose-coloured sash and white muslin dress, with a caution that she was not to consider the tucks up to the waist as a provision for future growth.
She flew to exhibit the finery to the Miss Faithfulls, and to consult on the making-up, and, to her consternation, was caught by Miss Conway kneeling on the floor, being measured by Miss Salome. To Isabel, there was a sort of touching novelty in the simplicity that could glory in pink ribbon when embellished by being a brother's gift; she looked on with calm pleasure at such homely excitement, and even fetched some bows of her own, for examples, and offered to send Marianne down with patterns.
Clara was enchanted to recognise in Miss Conway the vision of the Euston-square platform. The grand, quiet style of beauty was exactly fitted to impress a mind like hers, so strongly imbued with sentiments like those of Louis, and regarding Isabel as necessarily Louis's destiny, she began to adore her accordingly, with a girl- reverence, quite as profound, far more unselfish, and little less ardent than that of man for woman. That a female vision of perfection should engross Clara's imagination, was a step towards softening her; but, poor child! the dawn of womanhood was to come in a painful burst.
Surprised at her own aspect, with her light hair dressed by Jane and wreathed with ivy leaves by grandmamma, and her skirts so full that she could not refrain from making a gigantic cheese, she was inspected and admired by granny and Jane, almost approved by Jem himself; and, exalted by the consciousness of being well-dressed, she repaired to the school-room tea at the House Beautiful.
Virginia and Louisa were, she thought, very poor imitations of Louis's countenance-the one too round, the other too thin and sallow; but both they, their brother, and Miss King were so utterly unlike anything at school, that she was at once at ease, and began talking with Walter over schoolboy fun, in which he could not be a greater proficient than herself. Walter struck up a violent friendship for her on the spot, and took to calling her 'a fellow,' in oblivion of her sex; and Virginia and Louisa fell into ecstasies of laughter, which encouraged Clara and Walter to compote with each other which should most astonish their weak minds.
In the drawing-room, Lady Conway spoke so graciously, that Clara, was quite distressed at looking over her head. Mary looked somewhat oppressed, saying her mother had not been so well that day; and she was disposed to keep in the background, and occupy herself with Clara; but it was quite contrary to the Giraffe's notions to be engrossed by any one when Louis was coming. As if she had divined Mary's intentions of keeping her from importuning him, she was continually gazing at the door, ready at once to claim his attention.
At first, the gentlemen only appeared in a black herd at the door, where Mr. Calcott had stopped Lord Ormersfield short, in his eagerness to impress on him the views of the county on a police-bill in course of preparation for the next session. The other magistrates congregated round; but James Frost and Sydney Calcott had slipped past, to the piano where Lady Conway had sent Miss Calcott and Isabel. 'Why did not Fitzjocelyn, come too?' was murmured by the young group in the recess opposite the door; and when at last he became visible, leaning against the wall, listening to the Squire, Virginia declared he was going to serve them just as he used at Beauchastel.
'Oh, no! he shan't-I'll rescue him!' exclaimed Clara; and leaping up to her cameleopard attitude, she sprang forward, and, with a voice audible in an unlucky lull of the music, she exclaimed, 'Louis! Louis! don't you see that I am here?'
As he turned, with a look of surprise and almost rebuke, her own words came back to her ears as they must have sounded to others; her face became poppy-coloured, nothing light but her flaxen eyebrows; and she scarcely gave her hand to be shaken. 'No, I did not know you were coming,' he said; and almost partaking her confusion, as he felt all eyes upon her, he looked in vain for a refuge for her.
How welcome was Mary's kind face and quiet gesture, covering poor Clara's retreat as she sank into a dark nook, sheltered by the old black cabinet! Louis thanked Mary by a look, as much as to say, 'Just like you,' and was glad to perceive that James had not been present. He had gone to ask Miss Faithfull to supply the missing stanzas of a Jacobite song, and just then returned, saying that she knew them, but could not remember them.
Fitzjocelyn, however, capped the fragment, and illustrated it with some anecdotes that interested Miss Conway. James had great hopes that she was going to see him to the best advantage, but still there was a great drawback in the presence of Sydney Calcott. Idolized at home, successful abroad, young Calcott had enough of the prig to be a perpetual irritation to Jem Frost, all the more because he could never make Louis resent, nor accept, as other than natural, the goodnatured supercilious patronage of the steady distinguished senior towards the idle junior.
Jacobite legends and Stuart relics would have made Miss Conway oblivious of everything else; but Sydney Calcott must needs divert the conversation from that channel by saying, 'Ah! there Fitzjocelyn is in his element. He is a perfect handbook to the byways of history.'
'For the diffusion of useless knowledge?' said Louis.
'Illustrated by the examination, when the only fact you could adduce about the Argonauts was that Charles V. founded the order of the Golden Fleece.'
'I beg your pardon; it was his great-grandfather. I had read my Quentin Durward too well for that.'
'I suspect,' said Isabel, 'that we had all rather be examined in our Quentin Durward than our Charles V.
'Ah!' said young Calcott, 'I had all my dates at my fingers' ends when I went up for the modern history prize. Now my sister could beat me.'
'A proof of what I always say,' observed Louis, 'that it is lost labour to read for an examination.'
'From personal experience?' asked Sydney.
'A Strasburg goose nailed down and crammed before a fire, becomes a Strasburg pie,' said Louis.
Never did Isabel look more bewildered, and Sydney did not seem at once to catch the meaning. James added, 'A goose destined to fulfil the term of existence is not crammed, but the pie stimulus is not required to prevent it from starving.'
'Is your curious and complimentary culinary fable aimed against reading or against examinations?' asked Sydney.
'Against neither; only against the connecting preposition.'
'Then you mean to find a superhuman set of students?'
'No; I'm past that. Men and examinations will go on as they are; the goose will run wild, the requirements will
