When the Lady Caroline retired to her own rooms after the dinner-party at which Walter Joyce had learned the news from Woolgreaves, she was no more inclined than usual to try the efficacy of a "beauty" sleep; but she was much less inclined to grumble at the dulness of Westhope, to wish the countess could contrive to have another woman or two whom she might talk to of an evening, and who would not want such a lot of sleep to be resorted to so absurdly early, and to scold her maid, than usual. The maid perceived the felicitous alteration in her ladyship's mood immediately. It made an important difference to her. Lady Caroline allowed her to remove all her ornaments and to brush her hair without finding fault with her, and surprised the patient Abigail, who must have had it "made very well worth her while" to endure the fatigues of her office, by telling her she should not require her any longer, and that she was sure she must be tired. Left to herself, the Lady Caroline did not feel so impatient of her solitude as usual, but fell into a reverie which occupied her mind completely. We have seen this nobly born, and in some respects (chiefly external) highly gifted, woman as she appeared among her brother's guests. While she sat by the fire in her dressing-room--with which she never dispensed, at any season, in "the odious English climate," as she was wont to call it--l-et us look into her life and see her as she really was. Lady Caroline Mansergh had married, or rather, her mother had married her to, a gentleman of considerable importance, wealth, and more than mature years, when she was just seventeen. Very fair and very sweet seventeen, whom it had been somewhat difficult to convince of the delights and advantages of being "an old man's darling." But Lady Hetherington had not accustomed her children to gentle or affectionate treatment, or to having their inclinations consulted in any way. She no more recognised Lady Caroline's right to choose her own husband than she would have consulted her taste in her babyhood about her own sashes; and the girl's feeble attempt at remonstrance in opposition to the solid advantages of the proposals made by Mr. Mansergh did not produce the least effect at the time. Her ladyship carried her point triumphantly, and the girl found her fate more endurable, on the whole, than she had expected. But she never forgave her mother, and that was rather odd, though not, when looked into, very unreasonable; Mr. Mansergh never forgave her either. The countess had accomplished his wishes for him, the countess had bestowed upon him the wife he coveted, but she had deceived him, and when he won his wife's confidence he found her mother out. He had not been se foolish as to think the girl loved him, but he had believed she was willing to become his wife--he had never had a suspicion of the domestic scenes which had preceded that pretty _tableau vivant_ at St. George's,