Mademoiselle Hennequin, I took occasion to remark, occupied much of the attention of Betts Shoreham, at Mrs. Leamington's ball. They understood each other perfectly, though the young man could not get over the feeling created by the governess's manner when she first met with me. Throughout the evening, indeed, her eye seemed studiously averted from me, as if she struggled to suppress certain sentiments or sensations, that she was unwilling to betray. Now, these sentiments, if sentiments they were, or sensations, as they were beyond all dispute, might be envy--repinings at another's better fortunes--or they might be excited by philosophical and commendable reflections touching those follies which so often lead the young and thoughtless into extravagance. Betts tried hard to believe them the last, though, in his inmost heart, he would a thousand times rather that the woman he loved should smile on a weakness of this sort, in a girl of her own age, than that she should show herself to be prematurely wise, if it was wisdom purchased at the expense of the light-heartedness and sympathies of her years and sex. On a diminished scale, I had awakened in his bosom some such uneasy distrust as the pocket-handkerchief of Desdemona is known to have aroused in that of the Moor. {Shakespeare, "Othello"} Nor can I say that Julia Monson enjoyed herself as much as she had anticipated. Love she did not Betts Shoreham; for that was a passion her temperament and training induced her to wait for some pretty unequivocal demonstrations on the part of the gentleman before she yielded to it; but she LIKED him vastly, and nothing would have been easier than to have blown this smouldering preference into a flame. She was too young, and, to say the truth, too natural and uncalculating, to be always remembering that Betts owned a good old-fashioned landed estate that was said to produce twenty, and which did actually produce eleven thousand a year, nett; and that his house in the country was generally said to be one of the very best in the state. For all this she cared absolutely nothing, or nothing worth mentioning. There were enough young men of as good estates, and there were a vast many of no estates at all, ready and willing to take their chances in the "cutting up" of "old Monson," but there were few who were as agreeable, as well mannered, as handsome, or who had seen as much of the world, as Betts Shoreham. Of course, she had never fancied the young man in love with herself, but, previously to the impression she had quite recently imbibed of his attachment to her mother's governess, she had been accustomed to think such a thing MIGHT come to pass, and that she should not be sorry if it did.