"Well, perhaps he was right. Yet it was a very harmless and innocent little volume, after all, containing only the mildest sentiments. (Is that a good one?)" "(Very good, thank you). It was Tennyson's 'Idyls'--I remember perfectly; and it was filled with the prettiest illustrations. Oh, I was so sorry to part with that neat little book! Do you know I was silly enough to cry the day I posted it back to you?" Sir Mark regards me earnestly, almost curiously. I am laughing at my own past folly, but he does not even smile in sympathy. "I am sorry any act of mine should have cost you a tear," he says, slowly, "But why did you not write a line to explain all this to me when sending it?" "_Fancy_ the iniquity of such a thing! the very suggestion would have brought down untold wrath upon my poor head. To ask permission to write a letter to a gentleman! Oh, horror!" "And you would not--but, no, of course you would not," says Sir Mark, rather unintelligibly. And then I glance at Lady Handcock, and she glances at me. Sir Mark rises to open the door, and I smile and nod gayly at him as I cross the threshold and pass into the lighted hall. --- We are all beginning to know each other well, and to be mutually pleased with each other, when, towards the close of the week, Lady Blanche Going joins our party. She is looking considerably handsomer than when I last saw her in town, and is apparently in good humor with herself and all the rest of the world. How long this comfortable state of affairs may last, however, remains a mystery. She brings with her a horse, a pet-poodle, and a _very_ French maid, who makes herself extremely troublesome, and causes much dissension in the servants' hall. Sir Mark Gore and her ladyship are evidently old friends, and express a well-bred amount of pleasure on again meeting. Perhaps her ladyship's expressions are by a shade the warmest. "I had no idea I should meet you here," she winds up, sweetly, when the subject of her satisfaction is exhausted. "Mrs. Carrington, when alluding to her other guests, never mentioned your name." "No? Mrs. Carrington, how unkind of you to dismiss me so completely from your thoughts! 'Never to mention my name!' It is horrible to picture oneself so totally forgotten." "You could not surely hope to be _always_ in my thoughts?" I answer, lightly. Her ladyship flashes a sharp glance at us from her long dark eyes. "I might not _expect_ it, certainly; but I am not to be blamed if I cannot help hoping for anything so desirable." "Vain hope!" return I saucily, "and a foolish one besides. Have you never heard that 'familiarity breeds contempt?' and that 'too much of anything is good for nothing?' Were I to keep you perpetually in my mind I might perhaps end by hating you." "What an appalling idea!" murmurs Lady Blanche, softly, speaking in that peculiar tone of half-suppressed irony I so greatly detest. "Should anything so dreadful ever occur I doubt if Sir Mark would recover it."