After standing booted and spurred in the middle of the room for about ten minutes, and having learned that their servants had arrived with their baggage early in the morning of the same day, the two gentlemen retired to cast off their travelling costume, and attire themselves in apparel more suited to the drawing-room. Colonel Manners proceeded to the task systematically; and although he knew that nothing on earth could ever make him handsome, yet he took every reasonable pains with his dress, and was soon ready to descend again, with that neat, clean, soldier-like appearance for which he was particularly distinguished. De Vaux acted differently, as may well be supposed, and giving his man the keys of the trunk-mails, he cast himself on a chair; and, with his arms leaning on the dressing-table, remained for full ten minutes in deep and somewhat melancholy thought, while the servant continued to torment him every other minute, with--"Sir, do you want this?" or, "Sir, shall I do that?" Into his private thoughts we shall not at present pry, although we consider that we have a right to do so whenever the necessities of the tale may demand it; but in this instance it is only requisite to give the ending reflection of his revery, which may serve as a key to all the rest. "How cold Manners must have thought her reception of me! and yet her own lips, which never from her infancy spoke any thing but truth, have given me the assurance of her love. Well, we cannot change people's nature!--and yet she was very different as a child!" Such were the last dying words of his meditation and then, starting up, he proceeded hastily to dress himself, addressing the servant with as much impatience as if the man had been dreaming instead of himself. "There, give me that coat," he exclaimed. "Set down the dressing-case here. Put those shoes on the other side of the table; and throw the stockings over the back of the chair. How slow you are, William! Here now, pull off these great boots, and then go and see that old Joseph does not poison the horses with any of his nostrums." These various commands the man obeyed with as much promptitude as possible; and after he was gone, De Vaux proceeded to dress himself with all the haste of one who is afraid of being detected in loitering away his time. He was half-way through the operation, and was just arranging his hair, when Manners, whose rooms were on the opposite side of the corridor, rejoined him; and they descended together, without having made any comment on the subject which was certainly next to the heart of Edward de Vaux. He felt that in common delicacy he could not begin it, though he would have given worlds, by any curious process of distillation, to have extracted Colonel Manners's first impression of her he loved; and Manners was resolved to see more and judge more clearly, ere he ventured even the common nothings which are usually said upon such occasions.