And Cecil was satisfied. She had subdued her aunt, and had freed herself from the unwelcome attentions of an audacious adorer. She was inclined to feel kindly disposed towards Mr. O'Boyneville now that he no longer presented himself before her in the absurd position of a lover. She was able to appreciate his cleverness now that her aunt no longer harped upon the amount of his income. She owned to herself that many a girl in her position would have been glad to accept the hand and heart of this stalwart, good-looking, loud-voiced Irishman. She grew accustomed to his noisy laugh, his boisterous gaiety, his energetic declamation. His animal spirits in this rare holiday time made him as boisterous as an overgrown schoolboy; and there is always something pleasant in the fresh joyousness of a schoolboy in the abstract, however obnoxious that member of society may make himself in the concrete. Lady Cecil, who had begun by thinking Lauren O'Boyneville the most unpleasant of men, came to consider him as a person whose friendship at least was worth possessing. He had spent a week at Nasedale, talking every morning of leaving before night, and lingering day after day until the week was out! But at last he announced his departure so positively, that to have changed his mind after such an announcement would have been a weakness unworthy a man of business. A vacancy had arisen in a certain northern borough, and some of Mr. O'Boyneville's friends had persuaded him to allow himself to be put in nomination. To linger longer in that garden of Armida called Nasedale would be to endanger this new ambition. Every body was loud in lamentation of his departure, with the exception of those younger and more superciliously indifferent gentlemen whom he had made a point of annihilating once or twice in the course of every evening. The feminine portion of the community was not behind-hand in the expression of regret. The young ladies declared they should miss Mr. O'Boyneville "terribly," "awfully;" one rather fast young lady went so far as to say "disgustingly." Had he not appointed himself the umpire of their toxophilite matches? Had he not learned the whole art of croquet in half an hour, and then insisted on playing after a fashion of his own, whereby he had split a dozen or so of walnut-wood balls in a week? Had he not thrown them into convulsions of laughter one evening by conducting a mock trial of a case of breach of promise,--the broken pledge being that of a botanically-disposed young gentleman who had promised to go out for a woodland ramble with three botanically-disposed young ladies, and had gone partridge shooting instead? Was he not the most delightful middle-aged creature in existence?--and not so dreadfully middle-aged either, for he could scarcely be forty--and what is forty, but the prime of life, the meridian of intellectual splendour?