They look to themselves-or rather to some of themselves—an inordinately long string, as they file into the Websters' drawing-room : three long-tailed ladies, two swallow-tailed men. The light is very subdued, even more so than people usually have it in the five minutes before dinner. Paul gives up the idea of making out the Webster family in detail till dinner; then Lenore will explain them to him sufficiently to prevent his descanting on the ugliness of a wife to a husband, or making disparaging remarks about a child to a parent. As he stands near the fire, furnishing the room, in company with half a dozen other men-whom he regards with the innate distrust and thinly-veiled suspicion with which every Englishman regards every other Englishman who has the misfortune to be unknown to him-his spirit soothes itself. The drive was the worst part, and that is over: not allowed to decline into comfortable silence and semi-sleep by Sylvia, next whom he sat, and obliged by the noise the omnibus made to say "What?" and "I beg your pardon, I did not catch what you said," in answer to all her low-murmured prettinesses. He will be very kind to Lenore to-night. her Christmas Day rather tearful, poor child! thoroughly happy evening, if he can compass he will have better chances of private commune with her, of sweet grave talk, and sweeter looks into her lovely loving eyes, than he would have had in the small home-party, with Jemima and Sylvia staring at him.

Hitherto he has made Well, she shall have a it; after all, perhaps,

These thoughts are interrupted by the approach of an old lady in a yellow gown (to whom he has a dim idea of having been introduced as hostess), who leads him up to a plain girl in blue, presents him, and leaves him beside her, with a whispered request that he will take her in to dinner.

In a moment afterwards that festival is announced. Paul sees men and women, all equally unknown to him, paired together, marching solemnly off. Presently a couple, of whom neither man nor woman is unknown to him, sweep by-Lenore and Scrope.

"This is part of the pleasant little mystification, I suppose," he thinks, setting his teeth. "Who knows if Lenore were not a party to it?" But the ungenerous thought is no sooner formed than he is disabused of it by the expression of the beautiful face, that, unhappily for itself, can never keep its own secrets. She looks at him over her shoulder with a look of unaffected angry disappointment, shrugs her shoulders almost imperceptibly, while her lips frame words which he rather feels than hears to be, "Too bad!"

On the very smallest encouragement she would outrage propriety by dropping Scrope's arm and running to him. Perhaps, after all, he may be able to sit on the other side of her. He catches up his ugly blue fate in a hurry, and hastens off with her in pursuit; but it

is too late-another couple have struck in and occupied the coveted place; he has to content himself with being nearly opposite. There is a great deal of holly and mistletoe about the room. Most of the women have holly in their hair; it does not look particularly pretty, and scratches their heads and necks. Altogether, there is a great affectation of Christmas cheer and jollity. But the entrées are cold, the champagne is all froth and sweetness, and the sherry is not to be named in the same breath with Mrs. Prodgers's.

Scrope has no idea of allowing his neighbour to lapse into sentimental silence and wistful gazes across the table. He has got her now to himself for a full hour and a half; except under pretext of a bleeding nose, or improbably sudden indisposition, she cannot get away from him.

"Miss Lenore, the expression of your face reminds me of a scene in The Taming of the Shrew': Enter Horatio, with his head broken.'" Lenore declines to smile.

"It is not my fault that Mrs. Webster has not entered with her head broken," she answers, with perfect gravity.

"Why so?-for giving us such drink as this? Well, it is filthy stuff!"

"For making such a stupid mistake as to send me out to dinner with you."

He bows his blonde curled head ceremoniously. "Thanks.”

Engaged people always go in to dinner together," says Lenore, trenchantly.

"On what principle, I never could divine. With a whole lifetime to get sick of each other in, why they should be crammed down each other's throats before there is any legal necessity, I never could see." "That is their affair."

"Mrs. Webster was aware of the barbaric custom," says Scrope, growing as red as any girl. "She was good enough to imagine that it was I that was engaged to you."

Lenore reddens, and turns down the corners of her mouth.

"What could have put so grotesque an idea into her head ?"

"There is nothing grotesque about it," replies the young man, coolly. "Internally, we may be conscious of how distasteful to, and dissimilar from, each other we are; but outwardly, we are rather suitable."

"I do not see it" (very icily).

"Miss Lenore" (turning round and bending over her, to speak low and eagerly), "why do you thrust your happiness so obtrusively under my nose? Do I deny your bliss? Do I pretend to be as happy as you?" She is silent. "We cannot all be Paul Le Mesuriers, you know," says Scrope, with a rather jarring laugh. "Of course, we would if we could; but, as we cannot, you must bear with us."

Lenore glances across apprehensively at her lover, to see whether he has caught his own name; but no-he is not looking at her. With grave interest, he and his blue neighbour are together consulting the mystic French secrets of the carte. Bah! how greedy the best of men are!

"Was it good manners," continues Scrope, growing more excited at each word, "to shrug your shoulders so perceptibly, and exclaim so audibly, 'Too bad!' because your hand had to rest on my coat-sleeve for the tenth part of a minute?"

"I never pretend to good manners," replies Lenore, shortly.

"He will sit into your pocket all this evening; he will sit into your pocket," says the young man (making use of an audacious figure), "all the rest of your life. Need you have grudged me my miserable half-hour's innings ?"

Again Lenore glances hurriedly across; still he is not thinking of her. She looks at Scrope: his blue eyes are always bright, but the champagne, bad as it is, has made them sparkle more brightly than ever. With his straight nose and soft gold moustache, most women would have thought him distractingly handsome. An innocent, cherubic, yet stalwart beauty, such as some men manage to preserve through half-a-dozen seasons, Scrope looks as if he had said his prayers and gone to bed at eight o'clock every night of his life.

"For one half-hour forget that there is such a person," says the young man, entreatingly. "At cheese-time I will give you leave to remember him again."

"You are very good. Till then "

“Till then-bah!" cries he, with a reckless laugh; "let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die, or-marry, which is worse.

"The one is at least optional, which the other is not," says Lenore, with a demure but rather wicked look at him from under her eyes.

Paul has abandoned the carte; he has discovered what the word that puzzled him was. "It is Topinenbourgs,"" he says to his neighbour; and then he leans wearily back, and thinks that he will refresh himself with a look at his beautiful sweetheart. He does so just in time to witness the glance that she is bestowing on his rival: it is the only look with the slightest tendency to coquetry in it that she has given him during dinner, and it is the only one that Paul intercepts. Pouf! is not that ill-luck for you?

CHAPTER IV.

WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.

THE men are left to themselves-left to work their wicked will upon the walnuts, and to ravin amongst the candied fruits, of whose existence, as long as the women were in the room, they pretended to be unaware. And the women, meanwhile, stand, gently rustling, softly chattering, about the drawing-room fire; sipping coffee, holding gossamer handkerchiefs between their pretty pink faces and the flame, and mentally pricing and depreciating each other's gowns. Sylvia is very happy: she has, indisputably, a longer tail and a thicker silk than any one else present; her toilette happily hits the golden mean between the mournful and the magnificent, and she is almost sure that, as she left the dining-room, she heard some man ask who she was. Presently every one sinks into chairs, and upon ottomans and sofas; breaking up into groups of twos and threes, as similarity of tastes in point-lace, dressmakers, and children prompts. Lenore forms part of no grouptakes part in no chat. The night is cold, and the room not particularly well warmed; yet she chooses an easy-chair apart from the rest of the company, and unsocially sitting by itself in a little recess. Lenore deposits herself upon it, and bides her time. When the walnuts, candied fruits, and ungodly after-dinner stories are done, that time comes.

Paul is determined not to be checkmated a second time; he may dislike to be pointed at as an engaged man, but he dislikes still more to have Mr. Scrope pointed at as such. He walks straight up to Lenore.

"Do you know what I have got hidden here?" asks the girl, looking up at him, while her whole face laughs-not only mouth, but eyes, dimples, cheeks—as she points to the wide spread of her gown. "Guess!" "I have not an idea."

She sweeps away her skirts, and discloses a tiny light cane-chair. "Sit down! You are an unfortunately big person, but I think, judiciously sat upon, it may bear you."

be

He had meant to scold her: well, the scolding will keep; it may carried over, and added to the next account. He sits down, and his jealousy goes to sleep.

"I was determined to have no more mal-entendus to-night," says the girl, gravely. "If any one had come this way, I meant to have looked at them with my own scowl-the one you used to admire so much-and say, 'This is Mr. Le Mesurier's chair.""

"Lenore" (looking round with a sense of lazy wellbeing), is there any one in the room that is not a Webster ?"

Hardly anybody; they are all directs or collaterals. That tall old

woman whose forehead has goodnaturedly gone round to look for the back of her head, who is ambling about saying indistinct civilities to everybody, is Mrs. Webster, the head and front of all the others; she always reminds me of Agag-she 'goes so delicately.'

"I know her, the old cat!" says Paul, resentfully. "Serve her right if she were drowned in a butt of her own gooseberry, and I cannot wish her a worse fate."

"The old young woman who never stops smiling is Miss Webster; we call her the savoury omelette,' because she is so green and yellow! Does not she smile?-it makes one's face ache to look at her." Paul laughs. "Paul, if you jilt me, and no one else takes compassion on me, do you think I shall ever get to the pitch of smiling like that? If I thought so, I would have the corners of my mouth sewn up." "Prevention is better than cure: I would."

"The man with the red beard is Major Webster: do you see how short and broad he is? His brother officers say that he has swallowed a box is not it a delicious idea?-it quite invigorates me."

Paul laughs again: after dinner, it is pleasanter to be amused than to be amusing.

"Apropos of beards," says Lenore, turning from the company to a subject that interests her more, "yours has not disappeared yet, Paul?"

"Why, did you think it would? Did you suppose I moulted, like the birds ?"

"I thought, perhaps, you might have moulted voluntarily, to please me," replies she, with a slight pout.

"When my beard moults," retorts he gaily, with an expressive glance at the sleek but unnaturally luxuriant twists that bind her head, "I shall expect your (or rather the unknown dead person's) plaits to moult too."

Lenore shrugs. "Que voulez vous? Look at Sylvia. She has at least five pounds' worth on her head; I have certainly not more than £2 108. on mine. Nowadays, without a chignon of some sort, one's head looks mutilated and indecent."

"Then I like mutilation and indecency."

"Do you know, Paul" (with a pretty air of candour), "without my plaits I hardly look handsome at all ?"

"I do not believe it," replies Paul, with warmth; "I would stake my existence that you look infinitely handsomer, sweeter, modester! Why cannot you be content to wear your hair as Nature meant itflat to your head, and low down on your ears and cheeks?"

"Merciful Heavens !" cries Lenore, expressively casting up hands and eyes to heaven. "Paul!" (with a sudden suspicion), "have you been seeing any one lately with her hair dressed like that?"

To her searching eyes, he seems to redden ever so slightly.