BREACH BETWEEN UNCLE AND NIECE. A few days later the tranquillity of Darrell Court was at an end. The invited guests were expected, and Sir Oswald had determined to do them all honor. The state-apartments, which had not been used during his tenure, were all thrown open; the superb ball-room, once the pride of the county, was redecorated; the long, empty corridors and suites of apartments reserved for visitors, were once more full of life. Miss Hastings was the presiding genius; Pauline Darrell took far less interest in the preparations. "I am glad," she said, one morning, "that I am to see your 'world,' Sir Oswald. You despise mine; I shall be anxious to see what yours is like." The baronet answered her testily: "I do not quite understand your remarks about 'worlds.' Surely we live under the same conditions." "Not in the same world of people," she opposed; "and I am anxious to see what yours is like." "What do you expect to find in what you are pleased to call my world, Pauline?" he asked, angrily. "Little truth, and plenty of affectation; little honor, and plenty of polish; little honesty, and very high-sounding words; little sincerity, and plenty of deceit." "By what right do you sit in judgment?" he demanded. "None at all," replied Pauline; "but as people are always speaking ill of the dear, honest world in which I have lived, I may surely be permitted to criticise the world that is outside it." Sir Oswald turned away angrily; and Miss Hastings sighed over the girl's willfulness. "Why do you talk to Sir Oswald in a fashion that always irritates him?" she remonstrated. "We live in a free country, and have each of us freedom of speech." "I am afraid the day will come when you will pay a sad price for yours." But Pauline Darrell only laughed. Such fears never affected her; she would sooner have expected to see the heavens fall at her feet than that Sir Oswald should not leave Darrell Court to her--his niece, a Darrell, with the Darrell face and the Darrell figure, the true, proud features of the race. He would never dare to do otherwise, she thought, and she would not condescend to change either her thought or speech to please him. "The Darrells do not know fear," she would say; "there never yet was an example of a Darrell being frightened into anything." So the breach between the uncle and the niece grew wider every day. He could not understand her; the grand, untrained, undisciplined, poetical nature was beyond him--he could neither reach its heights nor fathom its depths. There were times when he thought that, despite her outward coldness and pride, there was within a soul of fire, when he dimly understood the magnificence of the character he could not read, when he suspected there might be some souls that could not be narrowed or forced into a common groove. Nevertheless he feared her; he was afraid to trust, not the honor, but the fame of his race to her.