the least enjoyment in the house emanated from it. Lady Muriel, seeing more and more of Wilmot, as the closeness of his attendance on his patient became relaxed by her advance towards convalescence, and studying him with increased attention, learned to regard him with feelings such as no man of her numerous and varied acquaintance had ever before inspired her with. The impression he had made upon her in the first interview was not removed or weakened, and he presented himself to her mind--which was naturally inquiring, and possessed considerably more intelligence than she had occasion to use, in a general way, in her easy-going, prosperous, and conventional life--in the light of an interesting and remunerative study. Lady Muriel's faultlessly good manners precluded the indulgence of any perceptible absence of mind; and she possessed the enviable faculty which some women of the world exhibit in such perfection, of carrying, or rather helping, on a conversation to which she was not in reality giving attention, and in which she did not feel the smallest particle of interest. The gallant _militaires_, the dashing sportsmen, the _grands seigneurs_, and the ladies of distinction who were among her associates, and the gentlemen, at least of the number of her admirers, were accustomed to regard Lady Muriel's powers of conversation as something quite out of the common way; and so indeed they were--only these simpleminded and ingenuous individuals did not quite understand the direction taken by their uncommonness. It never occurred to them to calculate how much of her talking Lady Muriel did by means of intelligent acquiescent looks, graceful little bows, sprightly exclamations, a judicious expression of intense interest in the subject under discussion when it chanced to be personal to the other party to the discourse, and sundry other skilful and effective feminine devices. It never dawned upon them that one half the time she did not hear, and during the whole time she did not care, what was said; that her graceful manner was merely manner, and her real state of mind one of complete indifference to themselves and almost everyone besides. Not that Lady Muriel was an unhappy woman. Far from it. She was too sensible to be unhappy without just cause; and she certainly had not that. She perfectly appreciated her remarkably comfortable lot in life; she estimated wealth, station, domestic tranquillity and respect, and the unbounded power which she exercised in her household domain, quite as highly as they deserved to be estimated; and though as free from vulgarity of mind as from vulgarity of manner, she was not in the least likely to affect any sentimental humility or mistake about her own social advantages. She could as easily have bragged about them as forgotten them; but just because she held them for what they were worth, and did not exaggerate or depreciate them, Lady Muriel was given to absence of mind; and though neither unhappy, nor