They had not been gone many minutes, when the one arrived for whom Dora’s eyes had been anxiously searching, and whose appearance brought hot, quick, pretty blushes to her cheeks. It was impossible not to perceive her emotion, although the reason and object of it, amid such a varying assembly, might have been doubtful to those who had no clew to guide them. Maurice and Captain Hepburn entered together, and advancing at once toward Mrs. Fielding, to whom the latter had to be introduced, of course, came immediately afterward to join the little group in the window behind her. Perhaps it would not have been easy to have found a more complete contrast than those young friends exhibited at that moment. Dora glowing, smiling, dimpling, with pleasure, and displaying, with a sincerity which her education had been intended to repress and contradict, the emotions which the sight of Maurice called out; and Hilary, pale and cold, struggling to conceal a degree of most unusual excitement, under a calmness which gave her an air almost approaching to haughtiness. Captain Hepburn came up with an eagerness not often shown by him, although not to be compared with the glow of satisfaction which Maurice exhibited when he saw who was his sister’s companion; and at the first tones of his voice, the first glance of his eye, Hilary’s coldness vanished, her fears were removed, and all her happiness was restored to her; for she felt that his look and tone said openly alike that she was _first_ with him, and that each look and tone was truth. His conversation, after he had smilingly satisfied her anxiety as to her father’s being comfortably settled with Mrs. Paine by his side, turned on the house and scenery. It was grand and beautiful; he had not been prepared for a mansion so fine, or a park so picturesque; she had never described it as so very charming; did she not think it so? “Had she not? she thought she had mentioned how much she admired it; perhaps he had forgotten; descriptions of unknown places seldom made much impression.” That depended, he affirmed, on who gave the description; he did not think he had forgotten any thing she had ever said, any conversation they had ever held. Hilary looked down at the bunch of exotics she held in her hand. They caught his eye also, and he remarked on their beauty, taking them from her hand to examine them. “They are all foreigners,” said he, “or raised in a hot-house!” “Yes, I believe they came from Mr. Huyton’s hot-houses, which are always beautiful.” “And what is that, and that, and that?” questioned he, still holding the flowers. He made her tell him the names of each blossom, and commented on them and their peculiarities. He seemed very happy, and perhaps was rendered still more so, by an observation of Hilary’s in reply to his remarks. As he returned her flowers, he said, with a sort of subdued smile,