suit, and to offer them the fortune of which he had now come into full possession--but all in vain. His friend, Mr Percy Marvale, had undertaken to find them out within six months if they were still on the habitable globe, and thought he had discovered that the scene of their retirement was in our county; and with a knowledge of nature drawn from melodramas, French and English, he had laid it down as a rule, that as they were reduced in circumstances, Alice had gone out as a governess-- which accounted for his theories about squints and red hair. It was a curious story; but there was perfect sincerity in all he said; and instead of trying to dissuade him, I could not help offering my services to discover the vanished pleiad--if she twinkled in any part of our Worcestershire heavens. During this long communication we had left the garden, and were lounging slowly by the side of the river that runs through the park. We were both engaged in the narrative, and I was no little surprised, on looking to the other side, to see my magisterial friend, Old Smith, and his two daughters, busy with fishing-rods. The girls were tastefully dressed-- but more to catch admiration than fish; two very showy handsome girls they were and I could not help thinking in my secret soul that there were not much odds to be risked on the late favourite Alice, against such a spanker as Monimia Smith. As for Sibylla, she despised gold and acres in comparison with genius and mustaches; and therefore, I concluded, she intended to be the second horse to her sister, and keep out the rest of the field. A clever, dashing, creature Monimia certainly, with such a pretence at childishness that nobody felt any wonder at any thing she did. And that same childishness is a very captivating quality till a girl is rising twenty or thereabouts; but after that time it does not take. At the same time, it is only a show qualification after all, and may do for a ball-room, but has no chance any where else. We looked at them without making any remark, and all three pretended to be so busy watching, their floats, that they had no idea--not they, poor souls!--that Frank Edwards of Bandvale Hall was within a mile of them. Sibylla occasionally glanced towards the house, in hopes, I suppose, of seeing Mr Percy Marvale emerge from his literary labours; but Monimia, looking under her long beautiful eyelashes, saw very well where we were, and threw herself into twenty attitudes of expectation, hope, and disappointment, ad ran through the whole gamut of a fisher's passions, in a way that would have done for a recitation of Collins's ode; and graceful, playful, and beautiful the attitudes were-- and I saw in a moment that Frank's attention was caught. He was silent all of a sudden, and said no more about Alice Elstree. Monimia had it all her own way; but when she saw that her bait had taken, she determined to play the trout a little longer. She cast herself into