nounced together. But the first glance at Lady Charles instantly dispelled all her fears, and thick coming fancies; as she beheld (what in common life would be called) a middle-aged woman, with out any pretensions to beauty, beyond a tolerably regular set of features, and a figure, which, though evidently of a fine structure, was thin, almost to meagreness. Her dress was striking without being singular-her manners were quiet, but perfectly elegant, and the tout ensemble conveyed that impression of high birth and high breeding, which is something too subtle and refined to be described or analyzed; something of so delicate and impalpable a nature, that it might sometimes escape notice altogether, but for the effect it produces upon others. Gertrude had never felt that her mother was vulgar, till she contrasted the florid pomposity of her manner with the ease, grace, and simplicity of Lady Charles Arabin; she spoke little, and there was nothing in her conversation beyond the frivolous chit-chat of the day; but her voice and accent were both fine, and she skimmed over subjects with an airy lightness, that would have baffled any thing like discussion, even had any one been so inclined. She invited Ger,

trude to take a drive with her, to which she readily acceded, notwithstanding Mrs St Clair's manifest displeasure, which, however, she did not venture to express.

That lady was considerably annoyed by the manners of Lady Charles, which made her feel her own as something unwieldy and overgrownlike a long train, they were both out of the way. and in the way, and she did not know very well how to dispose of them. Indeed, few things can be more irritating than for those, who have hitherto piqued themselves upon the abundance of their manner, to find all at once that they have a great deal too much; that no one is inclined to take it off their hands, and that, in short, it is dead stock.

Lady Charles took leave, but Gertrude stopped a moment in the drawing-room behind her companions, to say a few coaxing words to her mother; then, as she hurried to overtake them, she heard Lady Charles say, as in answer to some remark of Colonel Delmour, "She is perfect!" and she blushed as she caught the meaning glance he turned to cast upon her. Much was done in the way of shopping; a variety of splendid dresses

were ordered; a great deal of bijouterie was purchased, and Gertrude was whirled from place to place, and from shop to shop, till her head was almost turned with the varied and bustling scenes, in which she was acting, for the first time, a part.

It is not at first that London either astonishes or delights. It is too vast and too complicated to be taken in all at once either by the eye or the mind; and it requires a little schooling to enjoy even the variety and the brilliancy of its pleasures, as they flash in rapid and never-ceasing succession on the bewildered senses. Lady Rossville, like all novices, felt something of this; and she sighed for the peaceful romantic seclusion of her own domain, where she was all in all, and where her lover was all to her. But it is not the young and admired who can stand long on the brink of pleasure, indulging their own sentimental reveries; and Gertrude with all her feeling, and romance, and enthusiasm, was soon in the vortex of elegant dissipation.

Borne like a feather on the tide of fashionable celebrity, she was hurried along she knew not whither; while at the same time, wherever she went, she

was hailed as the leader of every favourite folly. She was the idol of the day, and she breathed only in an atmosphere of adulation, baleful alike in its effects on the head and the heart. Amidst the delusions of the senses, she forgot every thing save her lover; but even when all looks were turned upon her, as the magnet of the glittering throng, it was in his eyes only, that she sought to read her triumph. Although her engagement with Colonel Delmour was pretty generally understood, and he had all the bearing of the accepted lover; still that did not prevent others from entering the lists; but, on the contrary, was rather an additional attraction-and men far superior to himself in rank and station, and some of them not much his inferior in personal endowments, had declared themselves her lovers. But even Delmour, jealous and irritable as he was, felt that he had no cause to dread a rival in her affections. Mr Delmour and she had only met once, and that at a formal dinner at the Duke of Burlington's, where they had merely exchanged the common courtesies of acquaintanceship. He was evidently of the family school; the Duke and Duchess being formal, dull personages, living in

a vast and stately mansion, amidst a profusion of magnificent heir-looms of every description.

"That would have been an establishment for you, Gertrude," sighed her mother, as they left the mansion, where she had felt more at home than amidst the gay unattainable ease of fashionable manners; "what madness to reject so magnificent a lot, but even yet"

"O! mama, beware how you utter even a hope on that subject, unless you would raise the shades of the whole race of the mighty departed Delmours. I have been thinking how fortunate it is that I am destined to be a mere scion on that noble stock ;-how could I ever have sustained the whole weight of the family dignity! I protest I have got a crick in my neck with only looking at and imagining the weight of the Duchess's oldfashioned diamond necklace ;" and Gertrude said to herself that Colonel Delmour was quite right in wishing to preserve her from his family circle.

She now gave herself up with greater zest than ever, to the round of frivolous occupations and amusements, which form the sole business of so many an immortal being's existence, and which are no less fascinating to the unreflecting mind,