Isabel made her appearance in her almost constant morning dress of soft dove-coloured merino entirely unadorned, and looking more like a maiden in a romance than ever. She had just left Adeline standing on the steps of a stone cross, exhorting the Provencals to arm against a descent of Moorish corsairs, and she held out her hand to Fitzjocelyn much as Adeline did, when the fantastic Viscount professed his intention of flying instead of fighting, and wanted her to sit behind him on his courser. Lady Conway pronounced her council complete, and propounded the fete which she wished to give on the 12th of January in honour of Louisa's birthday. Isabel took up a pencil, and was lost in sketching wayside crosses, and vessels with lateen sails, only throwing in a word or two here and there when necessary. Dancing was still, Lady Conway feared, out of the question with Fitzjocelyn. 'And always will be, I suspect. So much for my bargain with Clara to dance with her at her first ball!' 'You like dancing?' exclaimed Isabel, rejoiced to find another resemblance to the fantastic Viscount. 'Last year's Yeomanry ball was the best fun in the world!' 'There, Isabel,' said Lady Conway, 'you ought to be gratified to find a young man candid enough to allow that he likes it! But since that cannot be, I must find some other plan--' 'What cannot be?' exclaimed Louis. 'You don't mean to omit the dancing--' 'It could not be enjoyed without you. Your cousins and friends could not bear to see you sitting down--' Isabel's lips were compressed, and the foam of her waves laughed scornfully under her pencil. 'They must get accustomed to the melancholy spectacle,' said Louis. 'I do not mean to intermit the Yeomanry ball, if it take place while I am at home. The chaperons are the best company, after all. Reconsider it, my dear aunt, or you will keep me from coming at all.' Lady Conway was only considering of tableaux, and Louis took fire at the notion: he already beheld Waverley in his beloved Yeomanry suit, Isabel as Flora, Clara as Davie Gellatley--the character she would most appreciate. Isabel roused herself to say that tableaux were very dull work to all save the actors, and soon were mere weariness to them. Her stepmother told her she had once been of a different mind, when she had been Isabel Bruce, kneeling in her cell, the ring before her. 'I was young enough then to think myself Isabel,' was her answer, and she drew the more diligently because Fitzjocelyn could not restrain an interjection, and a look which meant, 'What an Isabel she must have been!' She sat passive while Lady Conway and Louis decked up a scene for Flora MacIvor; but presently it appeared that the Waverley of the piece was to be, according to Louis, not the proper owner of the Yeomanry uniform, but James Frost. His aunt exclaimed, and the rehearsals were strong temptation; but he made answer, 'No--you must not reckon on me: my father would not like it.'