By the time that hope had thus revived and renovated our hero’s soul; by the time that his views of things had totally changed, and that the colour of his future destiny had turned from black to white--from all gloom to all sunshine; the minute-hand of the clock had moved with unfeeling regularity, or, in plain unmeasured prose, it was now eleven o’clock, and three times Vivian had been warned that breakfast was ready. When he entered the room, the first thing he heard, as usual, was Miss Bateman’s voice, who was declaiming upon some sentimental point, in all “the high sublime of deep absurd.” Vivian, little interested in this display, and joining neither in the open flattery nor in the secret ridicule with which the gentlemen wits and amateurs listened to the Rosamunda, looked round for Lady Julia. “She breakfasts in her own room this morning,” whispered Lord Glistonbury, before Vivian had even pronounced her ladyship’s name. “So!” said Mr. Pickering, “we have lost Mr. Russell this morning!” “Yes,” said Lord Glistonbury, “he was forced to hurry away to the north, I find, to an old sick uncle.” “Lord Lidhurst, I’m afraid, will break his heart for want of him,” cried the lawyer, in a tone that might either pass for earnest or irony, according to the fancy of the interpreter. “Lord Lidhurst, did you say?”--cried the captain: “are you sure you meant Lord Lidhurst? I don’t apprehend that a young nobleman ever broke his heart after his tutor. But I was going to remark----” What farther the captain was going to remark can never be known to the world; for Lord Glistonbury so startled him by the loud and rather angry tone in which he called for the cream, which _stood_ with the captain, that all his few ideas were put to flight. Mr. Pickering, who noticed Lord Glistonbury’s displeasure, now resumed the conversation about Mr. Russell in a new tone; and the lawyer and he joined in a eulogy upon that gentleman. Lord Glistonbury said not a word, but looked embarrassed. Miss Strictland cleared her throat several times, and looked infinitely more rigid and mysterious than usual. Lady Glistonbury and Lady Sarah, ditto--ditto. Almost every body, except such visitors as were strangers at the castle, perceived that there was something extraordinary going on in the family; and the gloom and constraint spread so, that, towards the close of breakfast, nothing was uttered, by prudent people, but awkward sentences about the weather--the wind--and the likelihood of there being a mail from the continent. Still through all this, regardless and unknowing of it all, the Rosamunda talked on, happily abstracted, egotistically secured from the pains of sympathy or of curiosity by the all-sufficient power of vanity. Even her patron, Lord Glistonbury, was at last provoked and disgusted. He was heard, under his breath, to pronounce a contemptuous _Pshaw!_ and, as he rose from the breakfast table he whispered to Vivian, “There’s a woman, now,