In vain Fanny repelled all their insinuations with something approaching annoyance and peevishness. Isabella cast a meaning glance of amazement, and of mutual understanding, which only confirmed the young ladies in their preconceived notion; and when the gentlemen came into the room, they contrived to leave a place vacant by Fanny, while they crowded round Isabella at the pianoforte, to look at a new song, and be rapturous over a new _galop_. Lord Delaford, who thought he had done his duty in avoiding Isabella at dinner, was only intent upon gaining a place next her, and did not even perceive Fanny, who had been detained from joining the young set, by an old lady who was very particular in ascertaining the stitch of Fanny’s work. By the time Fanny had completely explained the mysteries of the stitch, Lord Delaford was among the youthful party, and she then felt it utterly impossible to get up, and to walk across the room to that side of it where he was. She saw Lord Delaford’s devoted manner to Isabella: she felt herself deserted! she knew by intuition, that all the people who had just been complimenting, congratulating, and quizzing, were in the act of becoming aware that she was not the object of his attention, that she was not the attraction to Elmsley Priory. Such trifles as these, when the blighted prospects of a life are in question, seem to an observer, and to the person concerned, when once they are past, as not deserving of a thought, yet, at the moment, they add not a little to the bitter feelings of an already crushed spirit. Singing became the order of the evening, and Fanny was of course called upon. She had had time to reflect upon her present position, and also to resolve it should ever remain unknown to others; she roused all her energies, and the unusual excitement brought colour into her cheeks, and animation into her eyes. There were other gentlemen in the room, and they were enthusiastic in their admiration of the power, sweetness, pathos of Miss Elmsley’s voice. But what were these praises to her? They fell cold and sickening on her heart; Lord Delaford had been in low and earnest conversation with Isabella in the embrasure of the window, and scarcely knew that she had been singing. When the music was over, however, they left their retirement, and both were struck with the fire, the gleam of worked-up resolution in Fanny’s eyes, and Lord Delaford whispered to Isabella, “How brilliant your cousin looks to-night!” These few words made her heart beat with a joy at which she was herself shocked, and when she retired for the night, she looked courageously into her own feelings, and severely reproved herself for having felt pleasure in exciting a look of admiration in the betrothed of her cousin. She determined no longer to give way to sad retrospection—to dwell no more on blighted hopes, but to further, as far as in her lay, their future prospects of happiness.