"Quite a little nun!" added Annie, and both the charming girls laughed with all the gaiety of their sex and the thoughtlessness of their rank. Lilian was both vexed and pleased at the discovery that Fenton had for so many weeks borne her glove in his bosom; but from that time forward she became more reserved in his presence, and walked little with him in the garden, and still less in the lawn or by the banks of the loch. She did not avoid his presence, but gave him fewer opportunities of being alone with her. Did she think of him less? Ah, surely not. A lover is the pole-star of a young girl's thoughts by day and night, and never was Walter's image absent a moment from the mind of Lilian; for like himself she numbered and recounted the hours until they met again. Their meetings were marked by diffidence and embarrassment, and their parting with secret regret. Walter, too, was somewhat changed, from the knowledge that Lilian had discovered his passion. His voice, which seemed the same to other ears, became softer and more insinuating when he addressed her. He was, if possible, more respectful, and more timid, and more tender. His imagination--what a plague it was! and how very fertile in raising ideal annoyances! One hour his heart was joyous with delight at the memory of some little incident--a word or a smile; and the the next he nursed himself into a state of utter wretchedness, with the idea that Lilian had looked rather coldly upon him, or had spoken far too kindly of her cousin the captain of the Scots' Brigade. Though the latter was a bugbear in his way, Walter did not seriously fear a rival; for he wore a sword, and after the fashion of the time feared no man. He dreaded most the loss of Lilian's esteem, for he dared not think that yet she linked love and his name together in her mind. Could he have read her heart and known her secret thoughts, he would have found a passion as deep as his own concealed under the bland purity and innocence of her smile, which revealed only well-bred pleasure at his approach. Many days of anxious hoping and fearing, &c. passed, after the affair of the glove, but he saw Lilian thrice only. She kept close by the side of her grand-aunt Grisel, and the old lady seldom left her wheel and well-cushioned chair in the chamber-of-dais. "Why did she not permit me to retain the glove?" he would at times say to himself. "Then I would have no cause for all my present doubts and fears. Had we been alone, perhaps she would have done so----" Walter was right in that conjecture. CHAPTER III. A BALL IN THE OLDEN TIME. Shades of my fathers, in your pasteboard skirts, Your broidered waistcoats and your plaited shirts, Your formal bag-wigs--wide extended cuffs, Your five-inch chitterlings and nine-inch ruffs; I see you move the solemn minuet o'er, The modest foot scarce rising from the floor. SALMAGUNDI.