an answer returned which perfectly justified George's misgiving that if Mrs. Ireton P. Bembridge were afforded an opportunity of offering Mr. Felton an impertinence, she would not hesitate to avail herself of it. The answer was curt and decisive. Mrs. Ireton P. Bembridge was particularly engaged that day, and would be particularly engaged the next; on the third she would receive Mr. Felton at three o'clock. Mr. Felton handed the missive to his nephew with an expression of countenance partly disconcerted and partly amused. "I thought so," said George, as he tossed the dainty sheet of paper, with its undecipherable monogram and its perfume of the latest fashion, upon the table--"I thought so. We must only wait until Thursday, that is, unless we chance to meet your fair correspondent in our walks between to-day and Thursday." But Mr. Felton and his nephew did not chance to meet Mrs. Ireton P. Bembridge either on that or on the succeeding day. Once they saw her pony-carriage coming towards them, but it turned off into another road, and was out of sight before they reached the turn. "I am pretty sure she saw and recognized us," George Dallas thought; "but why she should avoid my uncle, except out of sheer spite, I cannot imagine." There was no farther to look for the lady's motive. Sheer spite was the highest flight of Mrs. Ireton P. Bembridge's powers of revenge or anger. She was an accomplished and systematic coquette; and, having more brains than heart, however mediocre her endowments in either sense, she was perfectly successful. She disliked Mr. Felton, because he had never betrayed any admiration or even consciousness of her beauty, and it was very annoying to a woman of her stamp to have tried her arts unsuccessfully on an elderly man. She had tried them merely in an idle hour, and with the amiable purpose of enjoying the novelty of such a conquest; but she had failed, and she was irritated by her failure. If Mr. Felton had even sheltered himself behind the rampart of his years, it would have been more tolerable--if he had extended a kind of paternal protection to her, for instance. But he did not; he simply paid her ordinary attentions in his customary grave way, whenever he was brought in contact with her, and, for the rest, calmly ignored her. When his son appeared in her train, she had not the satisfaction of believing she could make the father wretched by encouraging him. Mr. Felton had graver cause than any she could help to procure for him, for disapproval of his son's conduct in most respects. She counted for nothing in the sum of his dissatisfaction, but she certainly became more distasteful to him when she was added to the number of its components. Mark Felton had wounded the sensitive self-love of a woman who knew no deeper passion. She was animated by genuine spite towards him, when she declined to accede to his request for an immediate interview.