The middle of Monday sees our heroine, for the first time in her life, surrounded by all the refinements of a well-appointed English gentleman's household. On her arrival she is conducted to the school-room of her young cousins, where she joins the party at dinner, and undergoes a somewhat unceremonious scrutiny on the part of the young ladies. They are good-natured, thoughtless girls, however; and though they do not fail to remark that her hands are rather coarse, and that she wants the self-possession of a lady, the circumstance is noted to each other in a carefully-subdued tone, and does not in anyway influence their kindly dispositions towards her. They exhibit, by way of amusing her, their toys and trinkets, and question her of her own possessions and attainments; but meeting with little response on this head, they try another resource, and considerately propose some merry game. The young novice, alas, has never had time to play! but she feels their kindness, and does her best to participate in the gaiety around her. The lady-mother returns from her drive barely in time to dress for dinner; and thus the awful period of introduction to her is deferred until the accustomed hour of dessert summons the denizens of the school-room and nursery to the dining-room. I wish that truth would enable me to endow my heroine with that best letter of introduction--personal beauty; but what girl of her age was ever even pretty? The beautiful roundness of the features of childhood is past, and the skeleton only of womanhood has succeeded it: hence the falling-in chest, the long, thin arms, the bony ankles, the squareness of figure, and, above all, the vacant or anxious school-girl face. It is utterly impossible to conjure up beauty out of such materials; they belong less to the individual than to the age, and nothing short of time itself can remedy the evil. But when, to such disadvantages, a frightened awkwardness of manner is superadded, as in the present instance, by the unaccustomed appearance of everything around, and the consciousness of a dubious position, it is hardly to be expected that the result could be of a nature greatly to conciliate the favour of an indifferent, not to say prejudiced, spectator; and the reader, therefore, will not be surprised to learn that a reception perfectly civil, though rather cold, is all that awaits the protégée in the halls of her benefactors. The hostess fills her plate with fruit, and the host, without asking her consent, adds a glass of wine; and then both turn to listen to the wit of their own offspring, and talk over the events of the day. In the course of some half-an-hour the gentleman exhibits signs of an inclination to take his siesta, and the rest of the party adjourn to the drawing-room, where a confidential conversation ensues between madam and the resident governess, in reference, apparently, to the dependent child, who, with the quick