"Among the beauties at this place, Miss L---- D----, the ward of Mr. T----, stands unrivalled. She is an heiress as well as a beauty, but the report is that both the fortune and the beauty are to be borne to another land, in the possession of the Honorable Mr. D----, whose personal qualities, united to his station and fortune, render him, in the opinion of the ladies at least, irresistible." Such was the paragraph in a New-York daily paper, which Mr. Trevanion one morning handed to Lilian with a smile. She read it silence, and laid it down without a comment, except that which was furnished by the proud erection of her figure, and the almost scornful curl of her lip. When next she met Mr. Derwent, Mr. Trevanion's eye was on her, for he thought, "She cannot preserve her perfect indifference of manner with the consciousness that their names have been thus associated." He was mistaken. The color on Lilian's cheek deepened not at Mr. Derwent's approach, nor did her hand tremble as she laid it upon the arm he offered in attending her to dinner. "Her heart must be already occupied," said Mr. Trevanion to himself, and perhaps he was right in believing that nothing but a deep and true affection--one which was founded on no adventitious circumstances, but on the immovable basis of esteem--could have enabled her to resist the blandishments which surrounded her in her present position. But she did resist them, and still, from the luxurious elegancies, the gay entertainments and the flatteries of fashionable life, her heart turned with undiminished tenderness to the tranquil shades of Mossgiel, and still paid there its willing homage to the loftiest intellect and the noblest heart, in her estimation, with which earth was blessed. September, with its cool, invigorating freshness, had come, when Mr. Trevanion's family returned to the city. To Lilian's great, though unspoken disappointment, the children met them there, and no thought seemed to be entertained of a visit to the country. Carefully she had kept the date of Mr. Grahame's conversation, in which he had demanded that she should make a six months' trial of life, freed from the associations which her early poverty had fastened on her. In a few weeks after her return to New-York, the six months were completed. On the day preceding its exact completion, Lilian expressed to Mr. Trevanion her wish to visit Mossgiel. "It is now six months," she said with a blush and a smile, "since I saw Mr. Grahame." Whatever might have been Mr. Trevanion's wishes for his ward, he had neither the right nor the will to control her actions, and he not only consented to her going, but went down with her himself to Trevanion Hall, where they arrived late in the evening.