circumstances, to say nothing of the young man’s own individual tastes, decided against the realisation of the old gentleman’s plans. A short sojourn in Italy, whither he had gone to protect and comfort an invalid sister, whose days when she left the shores of England were already well-nigh numbered, had completed the dislike to his profession which before had been little more than a surmised distaste. Cecilia Vavasour died a tranquil death in the soft climate of Tuscany; and her brother, throwing law study to the winds, and leaving _Blackstone_ to grow dusty on its shelves, remained to make the best of his three hundred a year in the sunny land that he had learned so soon to love. Cecil Vavasour had been three years in Italy--a busy idler, devoted, almost to idolatry, to the Beautiful that has survived the touch of Time; as well as to the memories, the associations, and the soft sadness that cling around the decaying ruins of the past. He had roved from place to place, mixing little in society, but yet not actually shunning communion with his fellows, when Lady Millicent arrived at Florence. It would have been impossible, even had he felt the wish (which he did not) to avoid his cousin, for the quondam barrister not to become intimate with the heiress of Gillingham. At first he was very shy--as shy as a proud poor man was almost certain to be under the peculiar circumstances in which he was placed. Compared to the cousin, who called him Cecil, and treated him from the first with marked kindness and consideration, he might well be termed an impecunious relation. Had Lady Millicent’s conduct towards him been different--had she behaved to him with anything approaching to her usual rigid arrogance--his poverty would have troubled Cecil Vavasour but little. It was his young kinswoman’s gentleness, her unwonted amiability, her actual deference towards himself, that, while it rendered him ill at ease in her society, both puzzled and touched him. He little guessed, while gradually falling under the spell of a woman who in youth was not destitute of personal attractions, and who could be agreeable when she chose, what was the true mainspring of her conduct regarding him. He could form no idea of the hidden demon of Pride lurking beneath that still exterior. To his thinking, Lady Millicent Vavasour--young, courted, with tens of thousands yearly at her command, with power to effect so vast an amount of good to others, and (which we fear was almost equally enviable in Mr. Vavasour’s sight) with wealth to indulge to the utmost every æsthetic taste--was scarcely likely to ambition any extra or unpossessed advantage. And then he was himself so utterly unassuming, so entirely unaware that he in his own person owned, or was likely ever to own, gifts that the rich heiress of Gillingham could covet, that, as I said before, he was at the beginning almost more puzzled than gratified by her notice.