the wife and sister of Mr. Aubrey. The former was a very interesting and handsome woman--with raven hair, and a complexion of dazzling fairness--of nearly eight-and-twenty; the latter was a very beautiful girl, somewhere between twenty and twenty-one. Both were dressed with the utmost simplicity and elegance. Mrs. Aubrey, most dotingly fond of her husband, and a blooming young mother of two as charming children as were to be met with in a day's walk all over both the parks, was, in character and manners, all pliancy and gentleness; while about Miss Aubrey there was a dash of spirit which gave an infinite zest to her beauty. Her blue eyes beamed with the richest expression of feeling--in short, Catherine Aubrey was, both in face and figure, a downright English beauty; and she knew--truth must be told--that such she appeared to the Great Duke, whose cold aquiline eye she often _felt_ to be settled upon her with satisfaction. The fact was that he had penetrated at a first glance beneath the mere surface of an arch, sweet, and winning manner, and detected a certain strength of character in Miss Aubrey which gave him more than usual interest in her, and spread over his iron-cast features a pleasant expression, relaxing their sternness. It might indeed be said, that before her, in his person, "Grim-visaged war had smooth'd his wrinkled front." 'Twas a subject for a painter, that delicate and blooming girl, her auburn hair hanging in careless grace on each side of her white forehead, while her eyes, "That might have sooth'd a tiger's rage, Or thaw'd the cold heart of a conqueror,"