sister, smiling, if every thing was prepared for a hostile invasion?

Julia started, and changed colour.

Nay, dear girl," resumed her brother, affectionately, "I do not mean that we are called upon to examine the capabilities of the house for sustaining a siege. The battery of teacups and saucers was all I 'alluded to; for it will certainly not be long before the natives come down upon -you."

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"I flatter myself, on the contrary," Julia replied, "that they will allow us a little breathing time."

Julia was mistaken; and the hours she -employed, by her brother's recommendation, in arranging the economy of the teatable, were spent in a strict scrutiny into the visitability of the new-comers, at the house of a lady who, from the decided superiority of her birth, fortune, and establishment, was allowed to take the lead in all matters of fashion and taste at Roth

bury,

bury, and who therefore deserves the compliment of being ushered in at the head of a new chapter.

CHAPTER II.

Conscious of age, she recollects her youth,
And tells, not always with an eye to truth,
Who spann'd her waist, and who, where'er he caine,
Scrawl'd upon glass Miss Bridget's lovely name;
Who stole her slipper, fill'd it with tokay,
And drank the little bumper every day.

COWPER. Truth.

MISS Rosilda Ravenshawe had been, in her youth, a celebrated beauty-was the reigning toast of the clubs, the belle of the race-balls, and had, in the common phrase, "refused the county." Besides all these causes for self-consequence, Miss Ravenshawe, though she now condescended to be the inhabitant of the best house in Rothbury, was of one of the old county families

F 3

families had had her cradle rocked beneath the roof of an ancient hall, and roamed, in childhood, in her father's spacious park. For these advantages she was allowed all due honour, and received that deference from the other inhabitants of the town, which even in England, cold, mercantile, calculating England, is never denied to birth, when accompanied by fortune.

It may be supposed then that the notables of Rothbury anxiously awaited Miss Ravenshawe's fiat, before they ventured a definitive opinion on the strangers, whose arrival, manners, and habits, had already, though so little known, been the subject of infinite tattle, gossip, and curiosity. A party, assembled en petit comité at her house, ventured to ask the lady's opinion of the new inhabitants of the Lodge.

Owing to the mutilated report made by her favourite attendant, Miss Ravenshawe had fallen into the egregious mistake of supposing Julia to be the wife of Horatio;

and

and she replied, in consequence of this impression, that, by what she heard, Mrs. Somerville must be a very eccentric, flighty, odd sort of person.

"In the first place," said Mrs. Sanderson, with a very significant nod and wink, "I can tell you, the lady you call Mrs. Somerville is not Mr. Somerville's wife."

"Indeed!" said Miss Rosilda, blushing as young ladies blush at fifty-three, and with an "a-hem!" which shewed her imagination had outscampered Mrs. Sanderson's intelligence a mile. "A-hem! how difficult it is to judge of people! Amelia, my dear," to her niece, a pretty, interesting-looking young woman, you may go into the garden, and finish collecting the herbs for your scent jar. A-hem! Pray then, Mrs. Sanderson, not that I am very curious to be informed, who may she be?"

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"His sister," replied Mrs. Sanderson, with the most perfect sang froid.

Miss Ravenshawe hated Mrs. Sanderson for a plebeian, and Mrs. Sanderson

hated Miss Ravenshawe for a prude, and was never happier than when she had thus, as she used bluntly to express it, put the old lady's curiosity upon a wrong scent.

"A-hem!" said Miss Rosilda Ravenshawe again; but this was an a-hem congratulatory, for her niece Amelia, who preferred hearing something more of the gay and handsome Horatio to culling of simples, had, notwithstanding her aunt's licence to depart, as the Irish say, kept never minding, and was still a listener to the conversation.

Mrs. Sanderson now turned to her daughters, to confirm her assertion, that, by what little she had heard of the strangers, there was no harm in them.

The four Miss Sandersons, opening their mouths all at once, like a nest of young woodpeckers, answered to the affirmative in chorus; they had dined in company with Mr. Somerville, and unanimously declared him to be an exceedingly pleasant, agreeable, gentlemanly young

man