service an appetite for fresh meat and soft bread, after four months' biscuit and salt beef. At all events, my dear cousin, reckon on seeing my friend the Knight gazetted as major-general on the very next promotions. The Prince is delighted with him; and I carried a message from his Royal Highness yesterday to the War Office in his behalf. You would not come to see me, despite all the seductions I threw out, and now the season is nigh over. May I hope better things for the next year, when perhaps I can promise an inducement the more, and make your welcome more graceful by dividing its cares with one far more competent than myself to fulfil them.'--What does he mean, mamma?” “Read on, my dear; I believe I can guess the riddle.” “'The person I allude to was, in former days, if not actually a friend, a favored intimate of yours; indeed, I say that this fact is but another claim to my regard.'--Is it possible, mamma, his Lordship thinks of marrying?” “Even so, Helen,” said Lady Eleanor, sighing, for she remembered how, in his very last interview with her at Gwynne Abbey, he spoke of his resolve on making Lionel his heir; but then, those were the days of their prosperous fortune, the time when, to all seeming, they needed no increase of wealth. If Helen was disposed to laugh at the notion of Lord Netherby's marrying, a glance at the troubled expression of her mother's features would have checked the emotion. The heritage was a last hope, which was not the less cherished that she had never imparted it to another. “Shall I read on?” said Helen, timidly; and at a signal from Lady Eleanor she resumed: “'I know how much “badinage” a man at my time of life must expect from his acquaintances, and how much of kind remonstrance from his friends, when he announces his determination to marry. A good deal of this must be set down to the score of envy, some of it proceeds from mere habit on these occasions, and lastly, one's bachelor friends very naturally are averse to the closure against them of a house “où on dîne.” I have thought of all this, and, _per contra_, I have set down the isolation of one, if not deserted, at least somewhat neglected by his relatives, and fancied that if not exactly of that age when people marry for love, I am not yet quite so old but I may become the object of true and disinterested affection.