Since the beginning of St. John's visit, the north drawing-room has been made over to him and his betrothed to be affectionate in, so that they may enjoy, uninterrupted, those fits of affection to which all engaged people are supposed, and sometimes unjustly supposed, to be liable. Whether they have reached the requisite pitch of warmth on the afternoon I speak of is, to say the least, doubtful; but, all the same, in the north drawing-room they are. Constance leans back in an armchair, rather listless. She is fond of work, and it is not right to work on Sunday: her feet repose on a foot-stool before her--her eyes are fixed upon them: she is thinking profoundly whether steel buckles a size smaller than the ones she is at present wearing would not be more becoming to the feet. St. John sits by the table; his left hand supports his head; his right scribbles idly, on a bit of paper, horses taking impossible fences, prize pigs, ballet-girls, little skeleton men squaring up at one another. He, too, is thinking--but not of shoe-buckles. He has got something to say to Miss Blessington--something unpleasant, unpolite; and he cannot, for the life of him, imagine how to begin to say it. Chance favours him. Miss Blessington, happening to look up, catches her lover's eyes fixed, with an expression she had never before seen in them--not on herself, as she, for the first second imagines, but (as a second glance informs her) on some object outside the window. Her gaze follows his, and lights upon "nobody very particular--only poor Miss Craven!" who, with head rather bent, is trudging by towards the garden. "How ill that girl looks!" she says, pettishly. "I really believe those sort of people take a pleasure in looking as sickly and woebegone as possible, in order to put one out of spirits," The opening he has been looking for has come. "Constance," ho says, bending his head, and speaking in a low voice, "what fatuity induced you not to send me word when you found that that girl was here?" "You forbad me ever to mention her name to you," she answers, coldly; "and, to tell you the truth, I thought it was a good thing that you should see her. If you had not met again, you might have carried a sentimental recollection of her throughout life, which you can hardly do now that you have seen with your own eyes how completely she has lost her beauty." St. John lifts his head, and stares at her in blank astonishment. "Lost its beauty!"--that "Face that one would see, And then fall blind, and die, with sight of it, Held fast between the eyelids." "Lost her beauty!" he repeats, in a sort of stupefaction. "Well," she replies, languidly, "why do you repeat my words? You know I never admired her much. I never can admire those black women, but that is a matter of taste, of course. It is not matter of taste, however--it is matter of fact, that whatever good looks she once had are gone--_gone_."