The hall clock struck four as its mistress entered--four o’clock, two long hours to dinner-time! the time when Harry would, that is, ought to, return; for she daresay’d he would be late, and that they should not sit down to table till half-past six, at the very earliest. What should she do to fill up this unharmonious interval? Why, as she had worked so hard all the morning, surely she had a right to amuse herself now. She would read some entertaining book, which would make her laugh and raise her spirits; for, despite her best endeavours, she was getting decidedly miserable. So to this end she opened a parcel of books from the library, and began upon a new novel, by that very talented lady, Mrs. Bluedeville, and read how a “fair and gentle girl,” brought up by a select coterie of fiendish relations, and subjected from infancy to a series of tortures, sufficient to have expended the stoutest negro, developed, under these favourable circumstances, into a perfect Houri of Paradise, with the “additional attraction” of possessing the mind, manners, erudition, and phraseology of an old Divine of the Church of England. This interesting young martyr, released from her educational Bastile, and turned out to grass for a brief space in a pleasant meadow, wherein pastured a gallant, but very moral, officer of dragoons, naturally falls in love with the same, who fortunately does not resent the liberty. Angelica, taken up from her month’s run and put to work much too heavy for her, becomes better and better, until, as might have been expected, she overdoes the thing, and getting too good to live, has nothing left for it but to die, which she accordingly does on the arrival of the post which brings an account of the bold dragoon (in whom, from a fancied resemblance to Harry, Alice had taken the deepest interest) having fallen a victim to his dauntless courage, which, leading him to kill sixteen mounted Sikhs in single combat, had failed to preserve him from the vindictive fury of the seventeenth evil-disposed survivor. Strange to say this talented work, delightful as it was, failed to render Alice much more cheerful; but it succeeded in occupying her till it was time to go and dress for dinner, and for this she was grateful to the genius of Mrs. Bluedeville. By six o’clock Alice, ready for dinner in more senses than one, betook herself to the drawing-room, where she waited patiently for half-an-hour, reading up sundry parts of Mrs. Bluedeville, which, in her rapid flight through that lady’s instructive romance, she had failed to peruse. At seven o’clock she rang the bell, and inquired of the butler whether his master had come in, or whether, if not, anything definite was known of his whereabouts. The reply was unsatisfactory in the extreme.