Nothing could exceed Isabel's delight at the daily party which met in the splendid dinner-room at Wetheral. Nothing could be more delightful to her imagination than the scene which presented itself to her view each day after the fatigues and annoyance of a long morning passed in her husband's dressing-room. When the six o'clock bell rang in the assembled guests, and warned them to their toilette, Isabel emerged from her labours, and, with the wild delight of a girl emancipated from a boarding-school, she flew to her room and prepared for the exquisite amusement of the evening. It is true, she was constrained to enter the drawing-room leaning discreetly upon her husband's arm, and his tall figure hovering round her chair, checked for a time the exuberance of her spirits, by his close and anxious watchfulness; but her eyes feasted upon the countenance and dress of those around her. Compared with Brierly, this alone was happiness. She looked beamingly upon her sisters, and complacently at the gentlemen, who were so soon to carry them from her sight. She never tired of watching Miss Wycherly, and her beau, Charles Spottiswoode; the former delighting her with the oddity of her remarks, and the latter full of agreeable entertainment. Wholly wrapt up in the bustle of the scene, Isabel forgot the plodding disquietude of the morning, and utter oblivion closed over the studies which Mr. Boscawen vainly hoped would reach her taste and improve her mind: her soul was dedicated only to simple subjects, and the warm-hearted Isabel acknowledged no desire beyond the delight of seeing happy faces and hearing kind remarks. Life to her was a blank, if it brought other sounds than affectionate greetings, or produced other objects than smiling, well-dressed individuals. During dinner, Isabel's eyes feasted silently upon her friends; but when the ladies rose to quit the dinner-room, and her spirit became disenthralled by the door closing upon Mr. Boscawen, then did her speech burst its enclosure, and revel in unrestrained freedom. The day preceding the nuptial morning Isabel was in very high spirits, almost as unsubdued as in the days of her singlehood: even Mr. Boscawen could scarcely repel the vivacity of her remarks, though he stood tall and grim before her, his dark eyes fixed upon her face, and his strongly marked eyebrows lowering at the rapid remarks which passed her lips. _Gaieté de cœur_ played in her eyes that evening, in spite of her silent, stern-looking attendant; and, when the ladies withdrew, Isabel caught Miss Wycherly's arm in their progress to the drawing-room.