the least embarrassed or confused, but perfectly collected, and, as it seemed, full of a quiet innocent mirthfulness. Nothing could be more perfect than was her manner, during the long protracted meal, towards her sister’s lover. She seemed to feel towards him already as if he were a tried friend and a brother; her air was perfectly familiar as she addressed him, yet free from the least touch of forwardness, the slightest levity or coquettishness; she met his admiring gaze—for he did at times gaze on her with visible admiration—yet admiration of so quiet and unpassionate a kind as a fond brother might bestow upon a sister’s beauty—with calm unconsciousness, or with a girlish mirth that defied misconstruction. And Annabel looked on—alas for Annabel!—and felt her doubts and her suspicions vanishing away at every moment; the vague distrust that had crept into her heart melted away like mist wreaths from the sunbeam; she only wondered now what the anxiety, what the distrust could possibly have been which for a moment had half maddened her. Then she began to marvel what could the sorrow be which, scarce an hour before, had weighed so heavily on Marian, and which had in so brief space so utterly departed. It must be, she thought as she gazed on her pure, speaking features and the clear sparkle of her bright blue eye, that she too loves, loves possibly in vain, that she has lost her young heart during her absence from her home, and now has overmastered her despair, her soul-consuming anguish, to sympathize in her sister’s happiness—and then she fancied how she would win from her her secret sorrow, and soothe it till she should forget the faithless one, and tend her with a mother’s love, a mother’s fond anxiety. Alas! alas! for Annabel!