"Then they would do me great injustice, Miss Torrington. I am a man, or a boy, or something between both: take me for all in all, it is five hundred to one you ne'er shall look upon my like again. But that is a play-going and sinful quotation, Miss Rosalind, like your name: so be merciful unto me, and please not to tell my papa." "You may be very certain, Mr. Jacob, that I shall obey you in this." "Sweetest nut hath sourest rind,-- Such a nut is Rosalind." responded the youth; and probably thinking that he had fairly won his five shillings, he raised his tall thin person from the position which had so well pleased his father, and stole round to the sofa on which Fanny was sitting. Fanny was looking very lovely, but without a trace of that bright and beaming animation which a few short months before had led her poor father to give her the _sobriquet_ of "Firefly." He was wont to declare, and no one was inclined to contradict him, that whenever she appeared, something like a bright coruscation seemed to flash upon the eye. No one, not even a fond father, would have hit upon such a simile for her now. Beautiful she was, perhaps more beautiful than ever; but a sad and sombre thoughtfulness had settled itself on her young brow,--her voice was no longer the echo of gay thoughts, and, in a word, her whole aspect and bearing were changed. She now sat silently apart from the company, watching, with an air that seemed to hover between abstraction and curiosity, Mrs. Simpson's manner of making herself agreeable to Mr. Cartwright. This lady was seated on one side of the vicar, and Miss Richards on the other: both had the appearance of being unconscious that any other person or persons were in the room, and nothing but his consummate skill in the art of uttering an aside both with eyes and lips could have enabled him to sustain his position. "My sisters and I are afraid you have quite forgotten us," murmured Miss Richards; "but we have been practising the hymns you gave us, and we are all quite perfect, and ready to sing them to you whenever you come." "The hearing this, my dear young lady, gives me as pure and holy a pleasure as listening to the sacred strains could do:--unless, indeed," he added, bending his head sideways towards her, so as nearly to touch her cheek, "unless, indeed, they were breathed by the lips of Louisa herself. That must be very like hearing a seraph sing!" Not a syllable of this was heard save by herself. "I have thought incessantly," said Mrs. Simpson, in a very low voice, as soon as Mr. Cartwright's head had recovered the perpendicular,--"incessantly, I may truly say, on our last conversation. My life has been passed in a manner so widely different from what I am sure it will be in future, that I feel as if I were awakened to a new existence!"