A cheerful party were met in the drawing room of Delmé. Clarendon Gage, a neighbouring land proprietor, to whom Emily had for a twelvemonth been betrothed, had the night previous returned from a continental tour. In consequence, Emily looked especially radiant, Delmé much pleased, and Clarendon superlatively happy. Nor must we pass over Mrs. Glenallan, Miss Delmé's worthy aunt, who had supplied the place of a mother to Emily, and who now sat in her accustomed chair, with an almost sunny brow, quietly pursuing her monotonous tambouring. At times she turned to admire her niece, who occasionally walked to the glass window, to caress and feed an impudent white peacock; which one moment strutted on the wide terrace, and at another lustily tapped for his bread at ne of the lower panes. "I am glad to see you looking so well, Clarendon!" "And I can return the compliment, Delmé! Few, looking at you now, would take you for an old campaigner." The style of feature in Delmé and Clarendon was very dissimilar. Sir Henry was many years Gage's senior; but his manly bearing, and dark decided features, would bear a contrast with even the tall and elegant, although slight form of Clarendon. The latter was very fair, and what we are accustomed to call English-looking. His hair almost, but not quite, flaxen, hung in thick curls over his forehead, and would have given an effeminate expression to the face, were it not for the peculiar flash of the clear blue eye. "Come! Clarendon," said Emily, "I will impose a task. You have written twice in my album; once, years ago, and the second time on the eve of our parting. Come! you shall read us both effusions, and then write a sonnet to our happy meeting. Would that dear George were here now!" Gage took up the book. It was a moderately-sized volume, bound in crimson velvet. It was the fashion to keep albums _then_. It glittered not in a binding of azure and gold, nor were its momentous secrets enclosed by one of Bramah's locks. The Spanish proverb says, "Tell me who you are with, and I will tell you what you are." Ours, in that album age, used to be, "Show me your scrap book, I will tell you your character." Emily's was not one commencing with-- "I never loved a dear gazelle!" and ending with stanzas on the "Forget-me-not." It had not those hackneyed but beautiful lines addressed by Mr. Spencer to Lady Crewe-- "I stay'd too late: forgive the crime! Unheeded flew the hours; For noiseless falls the foot of Time. That only treads on flowers."