desired to secure the enjoyment of such things as her soul loved, she must take care that it was a "good" one. A marriage with her handsome cousin would have been any thing but one of the required description; and indeed neither of them ever contemplated such a possibility. They were persons of a discreet and practical turn, and Mr. Guyon went to Hetty Lorimer's wedding (a solemnity at which Sir Timothy Henmarsh's son, a gentleman some years the bride's senior, sternly declined to be present) with perfect alacrity and good humour. They had been excellent friends ever since; and when, the time having arrived at which Mr. Guyon found it convenient to transfer his daughter from the "establishment" to Queen Anne Street, Lady Henmarsh gave him her advice, and offered him her services with enthusiastic friendship, what more proper and satisfactory arrangement could possibly have been entered into than that Lady Henmarsh should "do the maternal" by Katharine? "I've no doubt you'll do it to perfection, Hetty," said Mr. Guyon, as he rose and terminated the interview; "only you won't look the part within a dozen years." And the good-looking deceiver went down the stairs with a smile, which expanded into a grin when he reached the street; for Miss Hester Lorimer and Miss Isabella Stanbourne had been girls together, and the former was a little older than the lady who had married the irresistible Ned Guyon. This unexceptionable arrangement had now lasted a considerable time, and no likelihood of its coming to a conclusion by the marriage of Katharine had yet presented itself. Lady Henmarsh was better pleased than Mr. Guyon that it should be so, and less surprised. She understood Katharine better than her father understood her; she knew how entirely unscathed she had been amid the lightning flashes of real admiration and simulated sentiment which had played around her girlish head; she knew that in Katharine's perfectly impartial brightness, her frank acceptance of the incense offered before her, her smiling pleasure and indifference, consisted the barrier to Mr. Guyon's wishes. For her part, she was in no hurry about the matter; indeed, the longer Miss Guyon should require some one (meaning herself) to go about with her, the better pleased she would be. But though Lady Henmarsh did not disquiet herself because Mr. Guyon's wishes remained unfulfilled, she would very seriously and earnestly have disapproved of their being traversed and thwarted. She did not particularly care that Katharine should marry soon, but she fervently desired that she should marry well; and it was with a new and very unpleasant sense of misgiving that she observed the eager and vivacious pleasure which Katharine evinced in the society of Mr. Gordon Frere, and watched the faces and the manner of the two from the alcove, whence she beheld the dancers at Mrs. Pendarvis's ball. Lady Henmarsh knew very little of Gordon Frere; indeed, only one fact, beyond the good looks and the