“Lord bless you!” cried Paul, in a whining voice, “if you only come down amongst them with that great frill round your neck you wore the first day I saw you at 'The Corvy,' you 'll scare them so, they 'll never have courage to utter a word. There was Miss Daly--when she was here--” “Miss Daly,-Miss Maria Daly!” exclaimed both ladies together. “Miss Maria Daly,” repeated Dempsey, with an undue emphasis on every syllable. “She spent the summer with us on the coast.” “Where had she resided up to that time, may I ask?” said Lady Eleanor, hastily. “At 'The Corvy'--always at 'The Corvy,' until your arrival.” “Oh, Helen, think of this!” whispered Lady Eleanor, in a voice tremulous with agitation. “Think what sacrifices we have exacted from our friends,--and now, to learn that while we stand hesitating about encountering the inconveniences of our lot, that we have been subjecting another to that very same difficulty from which we shrink.” Then, turning to Mr. Dempsey, she added,-- “I need not observe, sir, that while I desire no mystery to be thrown around our arrival here, I will not be the less grateful for any restraint the good company may impose on themselves as to inquiries concerning us. We are really not worth the attention, and I should be sorry to impose upon kind credulity by any imaginary claim to distinction.” “You'll dine below, then?” asked Paul, far more eager to ascertain this fact than any reasons that induced it. Lady Eleanor bowed; and Dempsey, with a face beaming with delight, arose to withdraw and communicate the happy news to Mrs. Fumbally. CHAPTER XXII. A GLANCE AT MRS. FUMBALLY'S. Great as Lady Eleanor's objection was to subjecting herself or her daughter to the contact of a boarding-house party, when the resolve was once taken the matter cost her far less thought or anxiety than it occasioned to the other inmates of the “Establishment.” It is only in such segments of the great world that curiosity reaches its true intensity, and the desire to know every circumstance of one's neighbor becomes an absorbing passion. A distrustful impression that nobody is playing on “the square “--that every one has some special cause of concealment, some hidden shame--seems the presiding tone of these places. Mrs. Fumbally's was no exception to the rule, and now that the residents had been so long acquainted that the personal character and fortune of each was known to all, the announcement of a new arrival caused the most lively sensations of anxiety.