"I will, I will!" answered Maria with a smile, and almost at the same moment Lady Fleetwood entered the room. She seemed somewhat disconcerted at finding Colonel Middleton there, and she would fain have been a little cool and distant in her manner; but it was a very difficult thing for her kind-hearted ladyship to feel or appear cold to anybody. In the case of Henry, it would have been less easy than in any other; for, in spite of all she could do, there was a natural warming of the heart towards him whom she had loved and caressed as a boy, which she could not overcome. His manner, too, was very engaging; and he spoke to her so like an old friend, with so much of the easy confidence of long-tried affection, that she could not either persuade herself he was other than Henry Hayley, or make herself angry lest his evident love for Maria should spoil her favourite scheme of uniting her niece and nephew. To do Henry merely justice, he did not in the least attempt to conceal from Lady Fleetwood his affection for Maria; but on the contrary, to use the ordinary term, made love to her more openly and desperately when her aunt alone was present to watch them than he would have done in the presence of any other human being. Poor Lady Fleetwood witnessed it all with sad dismay. She had fortified herself strongly in her little plan for Charles and Maria; and the great indifference which her niece had shown for all other men, the rejection of two or three very eligible proposals, and the light and laughing way in which she usually treated the subject of marriage, when her aunt, in simplicity of heart, forced it upon her, had all tended to strengthen her belief in the security of her position. Now, however, she saw so terrible an attack made upon it, that she began to entertain the notion that she could not maintain it; and Maria, although she was not one to flirt even with a lover, suffered, every now and then, a word, a look, a smile to escape her, which made poor Lady Fleetwood tremble for the fate of all her little arrangements. Shortly after her return some visiters came in, and they were succeeded by others; but still Colonel Middleton did not give up his post, and remained there, with his manner a little subdued towards Maria, indeed, but still without any attempt to disguise his attentions. If there was any change in Maria's manner towards him, it became rather warmer than colder in the presence of her visiters. She did not attempt to conceal her preference, and poor Lady Fleetwood was more uneasy than ever. When she found, moreover, that Henry was to be one of the guests at Lady Anne Mellent's, she was actually roused to an attempt to carry the war into the enemy's territory, though, poor thing, heaven knows she was anything but fitted for an enterprising general. "Oh! then you are going down to Lady Anne's, Colonel Middleton?" she said, with a meaning smile. "You seem very intimate there. Have you been long acquainted with her?"