called, who attracted Lord Ilfracombe most. She was not exactly pretty, but graceful and piquant. Her complexion was pale. Her eyes brown and not very large; her nose sharp and inclined to be long; her mouth of an ordinary size, but her teeth ravishingly white and regular. A connoisseur, summing up her perfections, would have totalled them by pronouncing her to have long eyelashes, well-marked eyebrows, good teeth and red lips. But Nora Abinger’s chief charm did not lie in physical attractions. To many it would not have counted as a charm at all. They would have set it down as a decided disqualification. This was her freedom of speech; her quickness of _repartee_; her sense of the ridiculous; and her power of sustaining a conversation. Young men of the present day, who find their greatest pleasure in associating with women whom they would not dare introduce to their mothers and sisters, are apt to become rather dumb when they find themselves in respectable society. This had been much the case hitherto with the Earl of Ilfracombe. He had assiduously neglected his duties to society (if indeed we _do_ owe any duty to such a mass of corruption and deceit) and had found his pleasure amongst his own sex, and in pursuing the delights of sport, not excepting that of the racing field, on which he had lost, at times, a considerable amount of money. To find that his ignorance of society squibs and fashions, his slowness of speech and ideas, his inability to make jokes, and sometimes even to see them, was no drawback in Nora’s eyes, and that she chatted no less glibly because he was silent, raised him in his own estimation. In fact, Nora was a girl who _made_ conversation for her companions. She rubbed up their wits by friction with her own; and people who had been half an hour in her company felt all the brightness with which she had infused them, and were better pleased with themselves in consequence. Lord Ilfracombe experienced this to the fullest extent. For the first time perhaps in his life he walked and talked with a young lady without feeling himself ill at ease, or with nothing to say. Nora talked with him about Malta and its inhabitants, many of whom she took off to the life for his amusement. She drew him out on the subject of England (which she had not visited since she was a child), and his particular bit of England before all the rest; made him tell her of his favourite pursuits, and found, strange to say, that they all agreed with her own tastes; and lamented often and openly that there was no chance of her father leaving that abominable, stupid island of which she was so sick. Miss Nora Abinger had indeed determined from the very first to secure the earl if possible for herself. Her two sisters, Mabel and Susan, entertained the same aspiration, but they stood no chance against keen-witted Nora, who was as knowing a young lady as the present century can produce. She was tired to death, as she frankly said, of their family life.