He denied it with a guarded look. I thought it worse than odd, and my eyes filled with involuntary tears. Mr. Thornton rose and sympathised respectfully. "My dear Miss Burns," he whispered drawing nearer to me, "I am truly grieved; but your kindness, your frank condescension, made me presume-- indeed, I am grieved." I heard him with surprise. "Decidedly," I thought, "we are all wrong," and aloud I observed gravely: "Mr. Thornton, is there not some mistake? I am talking of Mr. O'Reilly." "And so am I," he answered promptly. "And I should like to see if I could not find him." He offered me his arm with a polite start, and an air of tenderness and homage that perplexed me; but though we went all over the rooms, Cornelius was not to be found. As the guests began to thin and depart I lost all hope, and releasing my cousin from duty, sat down in one of the nearly deserted rooms. Mrs. Langton at once came up to me, and asked if I had seen my friend. I replied that I had caught sight of him from the little Dresden room, when I was there with Mr. Thornton. "In the Dresden room," she said, looking astonished; "and do you really, a fair maiden of eighteen, venture to remain alone in a Dresden room? alone with so gay and gallant a gentleman as Edward Thornton? Don't you know, dear?" she added, edging her chair to mine, and lowering her voice; "he is quite a naughty man! Did you never hear of him and Madame Polidori, the singer--no?--nor of Mademoiselle Rosalie, nor of Madame?--" I stopped the list by gravely hoping she was mistaken. She assured me she was not, and wanted to resume the subject, but it was one in which I took neither pleasure nor interest; and I listened so coldly, that she reddened, bit her lip, and left me. The guests were all gone. As she bade the last adieu, Mrs. Brand sank down in a chair by the open window, and sighed to her brother: "Ah! Edward, as our own English Wordsworth so finely says: 'The world is too much with us--'" The rest of the sonnet was lost, I suppose, in the whisper that followed. Mr. Thornton seemed to pay it but faint attention; his look was fixed with intent admiration on Mrs. Langton, who stood by a table turning over the leaves of an album with careless grace. "What a night!" resumed Mrs. Brand; "with that moon and that starry sky, one might forget the world, the vain world for ever, Edward."