Betsey was one of the last to come out of church on a Sunday morning now. She hung behind while her aunt lingered to exchange the news with her neighbours. Since the day when she had hastened to give the Misses Stanley "a bit of her mind," relative to Muriel's parentage and rearing, a something more than coldness had sprung up. Miss Matilda's words on that occasion had been few, but scorching, and the look of withering disgust, which accompanied them, had been more than even her obtuse conceit and forwardness could bear up against. She had not dared to face the ladies since, and, they being in the heart of the group of lingerers, Betsey felt constrained to remain outside the circle, a sort of martyr to the truth, ruminatmg in silence on the consequences of proclaiming it, at least when the proclamation is ill-timed or ill-natured. The circle melted away in time, beginning with Muriel and Gerald Herkimer--who, in his bankruptcy and the absence of his family, partook of many dinners and a great deal of delightful sympathy at the ladies' residence--and ending with Penelope and Matilda, the latter of whom, though she exhibited fitful outbursts of vivacity, appeared depressed, and far from in good form. It was observed by those who saw them drive from the church door that, instead of taking the reins herself, she let the servant drive, quite contrary to her usual custom; but then Mr. Considine had been in the habit of returning with the ladies from church, and his presence at Matilda's elbow may have been necessary to give her confidence. Betsey reached the open air at last, feeling unusually meek and chastened under the lack of notice she had been experiencing; and in the revulsion of feeling which ensued when Mr. Joe Webb stepped forward, and, after ceremoniously inquiring for her health, asked if she would not favour him with her company for a buggy-ride down the road, while her dinner was "_dishing up_" at home, it is not remarkable if she "enthused a little," to cull a flower of speech from the English column of the _Journal de St. Euphrase_. "Oh! Thank you, Squire! that will be nice"--I fear _bully_ was the word she used, this sweet Western flower, but it means much the same thing, only a little more so. "Then come along! In with you! And we'll be stepping," which was perhaps a more free-and-easy mode of address than Mr. Joe's wont, for he prided himself on his fine manners with the ladies; but he was trying to get up his courage by a little premature audacity for what was to follow.