Some time passed, ere it was necessary to dress for dinner, Without any thing of importance, either in word or deed, occurring in the drawing-room, except inasmuch as Mrs. Falkland informed Colonel Manners that a lady was to dine with them on that day who had also enjoyed the advantage of his mother's acquaintance in her youth. Isadore pronounced her a foolish, tiresome woman; and Manners, on hearing her name, said he had met her some years before, but did not venture to dissent from Miss Falkland's opinion. Mrs. Falkland smiled, and tacitly acknowledged that her own judgment of the good lady's qualities was not very different, by saying that she had merely invited her because she knew that she would feel hurt were she to hear that Colonel Manners had been long at Morley House without her having seen him. "And I never wish to hurt people's feelings, Colonel Manners," she added, "unless when it is very necessary indeed." "It is never worth while, my dear madam," replied Manners; "and I believe that, with a little sacrifice of our comfort, without any sacrifice of sincerity, we can always avoid it, however disagreeable people may be." Manners was in the drawing-room amongst the first after dressing, and he looked with some degree of anxiety for the appearance of De Vaux, in order to see whether the tidings he had received still continued to affect him so strongly. But when De Vaux came in his manner had wholly changed. His conversation with Marian had had the effect which such a conversation might be expected to have. The recollection of it, too, as a whole, while he had been dressing, had done as much as the conversation itself. It had shown him a sweet and consoling result, unmingled with any of the painful feelings, to which all he had himself been called upon to communicate, had given rise in his own breast. The gipsy's letter, and the suspicions which it called up, had shaken and agitated him, had taken away the foundations from the hopes and expectations of his whole life; but that which had past between him and her he loved had re-established all, and fixed the hopes of future happiness on a surer and a nobler basis than ever. He trod with a firmer, ay, and with a prouder, step, than when he had fancied himself the heir of broad lands and lordships; and when Marian herself soon after entered the room, his face lighted up with a happy glow, like the top of some high hill when it receives the first rays of the morning sun. Marian herself, too, blushed as she appeared, for all the display of her heart's inmost feelings, which she had that morning made to her lover's eyes, had left a consciousness about her heart--a slight but tremulous agitation, which brought the warm blood glowing into her cheek. There was nothing like unhappiness, however, left in the countenance of either; and Manners became satisfied, that whatever had been the contents of the gipsy's letter, the evil effects thereof were passing away.