A young lady of remarkable beauty was leaning on his arm. He addressed her from time to time with great animation; while she appeared to listen with the most languid indifference. Young Lord Nelthorpe, one of their nearest neighbours at Arden, now approached our party. Jane had noticed him for some time, and, on first doing so, had coloured deeply. They had not met before since their arrival in town. He came up to our party, was very polite, and even friendly, but not quite as cordial as might have been expected. He conversed with Lady Arden for a little time. Music commenced, he made a slight bow, and moving quickly towards a lady at a little distance, led her to the quadrille. Jane had been so perfectly certain that he intended to dance with her, that when the music began, she had instinctively drawn her arm half way from within her mother's. Her disappointment was bitter, and arose from a feeling much deeper than the mere loss of a partner for the dance could have excited. From her earliest childhood she had been in the habit of hearing her own family speak of Lord Nelthorpe as a very suitable match. As children together, they had been quite little lovers. Public schools and colleges had broken off this familiarity of intercourse. He had, however, since arriving at the age of manhood, often paid her a good deal of attention in the country, where he had nothing else to do; and in some of the summer evening walks of the young people, a declaration had more than once seemed to tremble on his lips; still nothing decided had passed; and poor Jane's heart had been given away, some couple of years before she had begun to doubt the sincerity of his attachment, or the certainty of their future union. And why was Jane mistaken? Because, society being artificially constituted, the language of nature cannot explain the motives which govern its members; nor our own feelings, till we too become sophisticated, teach us to calculate upon those of others.