below her cousin Miss Deane; for the ladies of St Ogg’s had now completely ceded to Lucy their hypothetic claims on the admiration of Mr Stephen Guest. As for dear little Lucy herself, her late benevolent triumph about the Mill, and all the affectionate projects she was cherishing for Maggie and Philip, helped to give her the highest spirits to-day, and she felt nothing but pleasure in the evidence of Maggie’s attractiveness. It is true, she was looking very charming herself, and Stephen was paying her the utmost attention on this public occasion; jealously buying up the articles he had seen under her fingers in the process of making, and gayly helping her to cajole the male customers into the purchase of the most effeminate futilities. He chose to lay aside his hat and wear a scarlet fez of her embroidering; but by superficial observers this was necessarily liable to be interpreted less as a compliment to Lucy than as a mark of coxcombry. “Guest is a great coxcomb,” young Torry observed; “but then he is a privileged person in St Ogg’s—he carries all before him; if another fellow did such things, everybody would say he made a fool of himself.” And Stephen purchased absolutely nothing from Maggie, until Lucy said, in rather a vexed undertone,— “See, now; all the things of Maggie’s knitting will be gone, and you will not have bought one. There are those deliciously soft warm things for the wrists,—do buy them.” “Oh no,” said Stephen, “they must be intended for imaginative persons, who can chill themselves on this warm day by thinking of the frosty Caucasus. Stern reason is my forte, you know. You must get Philip to buy those. By the way, why doesn’t he come?” “He never likes going where there are many people, though I enjoined him to come. He said he would buy up any of my goods that the rest of the world rejected. But now, do go and buy something of Maggie.” “No, no; see, she has got a customer; there is old Wakem himself just coming up.” Lucy’s eyes turned with anxious interest toward Maggie to see how she went through this first interview, since a sadly memorable time, with a man toward whom she must have so strange a mixture of feelings; but she was pleased to notice that Wakem had tact enough to enter at once into talk about the bazaar wares, and appear interested in purchasing, smiling now and then kindly at Maggie, and not calling on her to speak much, as if he observed that she was rather pale and tremulous. “Why, Wakem is making himself particularly amiable to your cousin,” said Stephen, in an undertone to Lucy; “is it pure magnanimity? You talked of a family quarrel.”