The colour rose into Mr. Barrington’s face; he looked deeply chagrined, and said, “Nonsense, Millicent! you can wear it at least here, and at home you can keep it to remind you of your friends in London.” “Oh! I shall never need anything to remind me of my dear, kind friends; of the happy time I have spent here. But please excuse me receiving this. My parents would regard it as a proof of my folly and vanity.” “No,” said Mr. Barrington, “do not offend me—do not wound me by the refusal of so trifling a token of my regard.” He hurried away, and Millicent, in deepest trouble, sought one of his sisters to express her embarrassment to. She found them all together, and with some confusion and with gushing tears, begged of them to prevail on their brother to receive the bracelet back, and give her something of less value as a testimony of his friendship. But the sisters unanimously expressed their pleasure in the gift; were charmed with its beauty, and told her that she thought too much of its mere money value. They instantly clasped it on her wrist, declared it was the very thing which she wanted on occasions of high dress, and that she must by no means hurt their brother’s feelings by declining it. They all, they said, wanted to give her something in memory of this visit, so dear to them. They then replaced the bracelet in its case, kissed her affectionately, and one of them carrying it into her bedroom, placed it on the toilette-table. Dark and sleepless was that night to Millicent Heritage. The gift of the bracelet opened her eyes to what they might have been opened long before, the assiduous attentions and zealous courtesies of Edmund Barrington: the more than ordinary affection of his sisters. It was not the gift which startled her, but the state of her own feelings which it revealed to her. She could not see without terror the dimness of the image of Dr. Leroy in her heart, the space and intensity which that of Edmund Barrington had assumed there. The agreeable person, the courteous manners, the good sense and happy gaiety of this young man living amongst the proud, the powerful, the intellectually and politically distinguished, and destined to so immense a fortune, and who had been ever ready to attend, to serve, and to introduce her wherever enjoyment or social honour were to be found, had gained, unperceived by her, a hold on her regard, that only now stood revealed in its fullest proportions. What had made her so supremely happy in this visit—in this family? The love, she said to herself, of every individual in it. Mr. and Mrs. Barrington had treated her with the tenderness of parents. The daughters had received and treated her as one of them; the son, rather haughty as he was generally deemed, had been all devotion—a devotion never relaxing, always finding some new occasion of affording her pleasure. And Dr. Leroy? She saw with shame and compunction that her correspondence with him had declined. His letters had to her