As she looked on the splendour and luxury with which she was then surrounded, it was impossible for the young and impulsive girl not to think how pleasant it would be to see no more of duns, and debts, and genteel poverty; to be the mistress of Cadbury Court; to own such a glorious double drawing-room wherein to receive her visitors; to wear wonderful toilettes; to be always surrounded by so many curious and beautiful pictures, cabinets, and statuettes; to have an assured position beyond her own--the position that money alone can give; to be the mistress of these magnificent park lands, preserves, and pastures; the hot-houses and stable-court; the terraces, with their peacocks and rosaries, all whilom part of the heritage of a proud old race that, like the Cheynes of Essilmont, had come down in the world; to shine in society, and have always a full purse to buy whatever she fancied; but to have all these with Lord Cadbury--not Bevil Goring, as her husband! No--no! she shivered, and thrust aside the thoughts a momentary emotion of selfishness was suggesting, as treason to him whose ring was on her finger, and exclaimed, as she pressed it to her lips: 'Oh, that but a tithe of these things were my poor Bevil's!' She had been too deeply sunk in thought to hear the opening and closing of the drawing-room door, when Lord Cadbury entered alone, having left Sir Ranald dropping into his after-dinner doze in the smoking-room. There was a listless droop--an unconscious pathos in the attitude of the girl that struck even Lord Cadbury, and though a kind of child, as he deemed her, she was a stately one--a stately girl, indeed, when she chose. The proposal he had come to make was hovering on his lips; but a consciousness of his years on one hand, and the girl's youth on the other, rendered him suddenly diffident. 'It is coming now, I suppose--coming at last--this odious, absurd, and insulting proposal! Of course papa and he have arranged all that over their wine and nuts!' thought Alison, with annoyance and anger at her host, and no small dread of her father, who, finding her silent during the first courses of dinner, had rallied her on her abstraction. Whatever he had come to say, something in the expression of her half-averted face crushed all the hope that wine had raised in Cadbury's heart, and, seating himself by her side, he could only make some little apology for leaving her so long alone, and regret that he had not time to invite some other lady friend. He then drew a little nearer her, and, noting that she had a couple of tea rosebuds in her collarette, said insinuatingly-- 'I saw that your papa is wearing one of your favourite flowers at his button-hole--may I have one also?' 'You are not papa,' she replied, curtly, to her half-century Romeo; 'such little decorations seem suitable only for young folks,' she added, 'but I shall give you a bud with pleasure.'