table, and followed her sister up-stairs. What very blind people parents are sometimes! and they pride themselves upon being so particularly clear-sighted all the while! They are almost always sure to suspect in the wrong place, nevertheless; particularly where there has been any attempt at concealment between the real parties. Now Lady Malmesbridge wished Lord Iford to marry Georgina, and Herbert was the only person she dreaded as a stumbling-block, thinking (why, we cannot tell) that her daughter had a partiality for the guardsman, which she tried to disguise from her.

The natures of Hyde and Georgina were neither of them naturally dissimulative; but from a fear on one side that his hopes were placed too high to succeed, joined to an inability to conquer his passion; and from a natural maiden modesty on the other party, joined to a dread of acknowledging that she felt an equal degree of passion to that evinced by her lover,-both, with a pardonable degree of reluct

ance to come to a confession of the truth to their respective parents, or the parents of each other, had completely concealed from those higher powers what now seemed to break upon them in all the undisguised soberness of truth.

By the bye, we cannot say that Lord Malmesbridge had not his suspicions on the subject; but if he had, he certainly never communicated them to his lady. The marchioness had beheld, with no small mortification, the failure of her plans with regard to Iford, for his proposal to Louisa Nugent was of course no longer a secret ; but as the marquis was rather in the habit of ridiculing all husband-hunting schemes and manoeuvrings, particularly where they had the misfortune to fail;-she, meditating a surprise to her lord, when she should have brought her plans to bear, had concealed from him, till, as she thought, certainty should have put it beyond the possibility of a disappointment, the clever machinations she had for some time been beguiling herself with. She was therefore free

from any apprehension that Lord Malmesbridge would reproach her with bad generalship, in addition to the accusation she felt she should deserve, of having neglected to keep asunder two young people, who, from being so much in each other's company, were but too liable to become attached. Then, she thought, what were Hyde's expectations? And in case Georgina's attachment to him was too strong to be overcome without much unhappiness, and despairing of ever being able, from her decided disposition, to bring about a match where high connections, more than wealth, or both combined, should be the object;--whether, finding all these things should ultimately prevent any other match, she and the marquis should give their consent to a union,-what were the advantages likely to accrue therefrom? Then came the Nugent property of seven thousand a-year, and the chance of Lady Wetherby's ten more, and his good family, &c. &c. &c.; his sister married to Lord Iford, whom she had fixed on for her

son-in-law;

ah! that was a thorn in her side! heir to a dukedom, and sixty thousand ayear! And yet there was nothing to which she could object in Hyde, for he was a grand favourite with her ladyship; but she was a little annoyed that Hyde should have chosen to fall in love with her daughter, or rather, (for this she did not much care about,) that her daughter should have fallen in love with him! It was very provoking, certainly, mais que peut-on faire?

We must confess that the marchioness was somewhat worldly. We must also confess that Mrs. Nugent was as proportionably elated at the idea of her grand succès as Lady Malmesbridge was chagrined at her failure. Her ladyship, fearing that her plans might have been seen through in the great world, and determined to give" all uncharitableness" as small a handle as possible,-(for that lady, with her sisters, “envy, hatred, and malice," pervade the very high circles of London, inveterate in a not less, though

perhaps in a more refined shape, than they do Cheltenham, Bath, and, in short, all petty country towns)-Lady Malmesbridge, we say, turned her thoughts towards the appearance of Georgina at a quadrille ball they were engaged to in Grosvenor-square that evening; and terrified lest she should not be able to appear on the very night that Iford's match would form a prominent feature in the sensible and charitable conversation,—a sort of analysis which she knew would ensue, and if she had not sufficiently masked her batteries during the campaign, or rather, the siege of Iford,-poor Georgina, and what was worse, herself, would come in for a share of the " pulling to pieces," as having failed in their attack upon the duke in perspective. She also dreaded that Georgina should have the pale countenance and triste look of a bergère délaissée, which, as the true cause could not be told, (being almost as bad as the supposed one would be) occasioned her ladyship, as soon as the dessert was placed on