Lady Caroline was a trifle the taller, and had a very stately carriage. Her hair was black as jet--her features were refined and delicate; but they wore a very cold, haughty expression. After a glance at her half-closed eyes, and the swan-like curve of her snowy neck, you unconsciously withdrew from her, as from an inaccessible beauty. The more you looked at her, the more she satisfied your critical scrutiny; but your _feelings_ went not out towards her--they were, in a manner, chilled and repulsed. Look, now, at our own Kate Aubrey--nay, never fear to place her beside yon supercilious divinity--look at her, and your _heart_ acknowledges her loveliness; your soul thrills at sight of her bewitching blue eyes--eyes now sparkling with excitement, then languishing with softness, in accordance with the varying emotions of a sensitive nature--a most susceptible heart. How her sunny curls harmonize with the delicacy and richness of her complexion! Her figure, observe, is, of the two, a trifle fuller than her rival's--stay, don't let your admiring eyes settle so intently upon her budding form, or you will confuse Kate--turn away, or she will shrink from you like the sensitive plant! Lady Caroline seems the exquisite but frigid production of a skilful statuary, who had caught a divinity in the very act of disdainfully setting her foot for the first time upon this poor earth of ours; but Kate is a living and breathing beauty--as it were, fresh from the hand of God himself! Kate was very affectionately greeted by Lady De la Zouch, a lofty and dignified woman of about fifty; so also by Lord De la Zouch; but when young Delamere welcomed her with a palpable embarrassment of manner, a more brilliant color stole into her cheek, and a keen observer might have noticed a little, rapid, undulating motion in her bosom, which told of some inward emotion. And a keen observer Kate at that moment had in her beautiful rival; from whose cheek, as that of Kate deepened in its roseate bloom, faded away the color entirely, leaving it the hue of the lily. Her drooping eyelids could scarcely conceal the glances of alarm and anger which she darted at her plainly successful rival in the affections of the future Lord De la Zouch. Kate was quickly aware of this state of matters; and it required no little self-control to appear _un_aware of it. Delamere took her down to dinner, and seated himself beside her, and paid her such pointed attentions as at length really distressed her; and she was quite relieved when the time came for the ladies to withdraw. That she had not a secret yearning towards Delamere, the frequent companion of her early days, I cannot assert, because I know it would be contrary to the fact. Circumstances had kept him on the Continent for more than a year between the period of his quitting Eton and going to Oxford, where another twelve-month had slipped away without his visiting Yorkshire: thus two years had elapsed--and behold Kate had