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We drove it was a crisp winterbetween small plantations of young firs, which looked like Christmas-trees met together for a party, only without the gifts hanging from their frosted branches.

Through a lodge gate, and up a wide road, in view of more plantations and far older trees of various sorts, until at the doorway of a gabled house the carriage stopped. Then such a bell sounded, the like of which I had never before heard out of church, and men-servants came to see to my luggage. My luggage was only a small portmanteau, and the man easily slung it off the foot-board of the driving-box, where it had been hidden by four stalwart calves.

That was all. And the stately vehicle disappeared, and might have turned into a pumpkin without astonishing me very much; everything around was so new, and yet, oddly enough, so familiar.

We stood in a grand old hall. Old pictures, fitting into old panels; a huge fire-place, with fantastic carvings on and about it, and fantastic logs ablaze, as they lay across ancient dogs, between which were feathery ashes, that looked as if grey parrots had been plucked there. Foxes' brushes, trophies of arms and armour on the walls, doors in four recesses in the four corners, looking just the very places whence persons of a mischievous turn might rush out suddenly and say "bo" to the goose they wished to frighten.

"We're at home now," said Austin, helping me to take off my coat and wraps. The remark was unnecessary; but it sounded so kindly in my ears, that I thanked him, and then replied, that "I was so glad."

"They're all in here," cried Dick, touching the handle of the door farthest from me on our left.

"Come in and see my mother," said Austin.

"She's here with Alice."

I entered the drawing-room. I felt, and I believe the Colvins experience generally the same feeling-that I was, there and then, in love with Alice Comberwood. No matter what her age, no matter what her looks, I was, without No. 164.-VOL. XXVIII.

setting eyes on her, devoted to her as soon as Austin had mentioned her to

me.

I had not been long in the world, and had shown myself very tender-hearted wherever the sex had been concerned. So had my father and my grandfather before me. Of this I was not then aware. I note the fact now, and beg that it may be remembered. I had not forgotten my nurse, my first schoolmistress, my Aunt Susan; nor Beatrice Sarah, Carlotta Lucille, nor Julie, of Frampton's Court. My heart was large enough to hold them all, it is true, but it resembled a child's play-drawer, where the old dolls and tops are stowed away, when the new one makes its appearance.

Mrs. Comberwood, a handsome lady in the sleekest black velvet, resembling one of the portraits in the hall, welcomed me in a motherly manner.

"I am glad to see you, Master Colvin; I have often heard of you from Austin."

Here we shook hands. I could not say that I had often heard of her from Austin, and so all I could do was to look at Alice sheepishly. It must have been sheepishly, for she, standing with one foot, of which I could only see the shoe's point, resting on the steel bar in front of the ancient fireplace, turned towards me and smiled a wel

come.

I advanced towards her.

"This is my sister Alice," said Austin, by way of introduction.

I had heard of her several times before he had mentioned her name just now. Cecil Colvin, my friends, was deeply impressionable at this time of his life, and, as on soft wax, the image of Alice was forthwith stamped on my heart. Images and superscriptions in soft wax are very soon effaced. Heat the wax once more, bring a different die, and the former image will, at a touch, have disappeared utterly, and for ever. But Alice had, in consequence of Austin's night recitals of Scott, got mixed up in my mind with Sir Walter's heroines, and then I had understood

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from her brother that we were down there to act something which she had composed for us. I valued authorship, and Austin had read something of his own to me privately, and as a great favour, which struck me as very clever, because it reminded me so strongly of "Ivanhoe" and "Guy Mannering.'

Let me recall this first meeting with Alice Comberwood.

Alice Comberwood, seventeen, the real ruler in her father's house, regarded by all with that imperfect love wherein there is an admixture of fear. Yes, Alice Comberwood, I will set you before me once again, after these many years, as with your mother's admiring gaze fixed on you, you stood smiling upon the gawky, awkward boy, whose silent tongue and speaking eyes told you of the admiration with which you had inspired him. You took it, as a queen, as your right; you took it from me as you would have taken it from anyone, but you secretly prized the homage of a simple, straightforward boy, as the real metal of truth, free from the alloy of flattery.

She had been standing in a meditative attitude before the fire, her fingers interlaced. Now she unclasped her hands, and stretched forth one to me.

I have ever been inclined to judge of female character by the hand. Not as the fortune-teller, who, from the lines engraved on the open palm, predicts a destiny; but, by the whole hand, and the hand's movements, I will warrant myself, if going by first instincts only, to be right in my appreciation of individual character. As to prediction of results, to that I do not pretend. To predicate of a firm character, that in certain circumstances it will act firmly, is to ignore inconsistency. Allowing much for accident, you must allow more for inconsistency. So, on thinking over this matter of hands, I conclude that I have an inclination towards hands, and when called upon to pronounce judgment at all, would rather form my opinion of a woman by her hand, than by her face. I do not say this of men. I do not care for men's hands. There probably is great character in

them, but they have never interested me, and never will. Alice Comberwood's hand looked best against a clear, sharplydefined white cuff, turned back over a tight sleeve. I will tell you what it was not. It was not a ghostly, transparent hand, that would have appeared in a Vandyke portrait, with long, tapering, pointed finger-tips, which seem as though they were only formed for bird-like staccato passages on the pianoforte.

Nothing unreal about Alice Comberwood's hand, as there was nothing unreal about Alice Comberwood. It was a firm, solid, fleshy hand, of even temper, soft in its mesmeric caress, truthful in its decided grasp.

Her gloved hand piqued curiosity like a veiled Venus. It was a positive pleasure to see the glove withdrawn, and then you wondered how you could have ever admired the glove which lay lifeless (and what so helpless and lifeless as a crumpled glove?) on the table beside her, suddenly dead and dull as the skin shed by the water-snake on the bank.

Most women appear to advantage in a riding-habit, Alice to more advantage than most. Logically you can infer how a habit became her.

Something more on this hand, and I have done. It was a hand that would write a plain, straightforward, yea for yea, nay for nay letter, in unangular characters that bear little resemblance to the ordinary meagre regularity and pointed-Gothicness of a school-girl's

style.

She had never been a satisfactory pupil. Ordinary persons are satisfactory pupils. Ordinary girls could copy with exactitude: Alice could not. To copy led her on to fanciful additions. Shesaw, intuitively, what she wanted in a book or a picture, and adapted it, after her own fashion. She unconsciously imitated, and a certain sort of originality grew out of her imitation. Later on she would have called this eclecticism, and have wondered at herself for her wilfulness. Facts were to her only the foundations of romance. She mentally dressed up anybody who was pre

sented to her, just as, when a child, she had insisted upon undressing a dressed doll in order to clothe its sawdust-stuffed body in the costume that pleased her. She would ride a tilt for those whom she had chosen to call her friends; but was inclined to scarify such as were obnoxious to her. Religion moderated her eagerness to scarify; and her attempts to reduce the precepts of charity to social practice, resulted either in silence or commonplaces. With her large, bright, inquiring eyes, clear complexion, and dark wavy hair, she could have passed anywhere for a genuine Irish beauty. But her parentage was pure Saxon.

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"I am sure you must be very cold," she said to me; 66 come to the fire. Why, your hands are like ice."

Thereupon she made way for me, and I began to feel myself of some importance. Mrs. Comberwood asked after my father, Sir John, whom she hadn't the pleasure of knowing, and requested some details about the Colvin family, with which I willingly furnished her.

"You have no brothers or sisters ?" said Alice. "You are the only one, are you not ? "

"Yes, I am the only one."

"You and Austin are great friends?" Her brother put his arm round her waist affectionately.

"Yes," I replied, "very great friends." "We have a room together, you know," said Austin.

"Yes, I do know," returned his sister, "and you keep Master Colvin awake with Scott's novels."

We both laughed. Then Alice said to her brother,

"What do the boys call him at school?"

"Nickname?" asked Austin.

"No, nothing rude; I won't hear it, Austin." She held up her hand to

warn him.

"It is nothing rude. You know they used to call me 'Owl in the Ivybush,' because, when I first went, I had such long hair."

"Owl in the Ivy-bush, indeed!" re

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"You shouldn't repeat such things, Austin, at all events, of your friend," said Mrs. Comberwood.

"He doesn't mind it," answered her "Do you?"

son.

I replied that I didn't mind it, of course, from him, but that I disliked it from others. Now was my opportunity for explaining to Alice that the title had fallen into disuse by this time, and that in point of fact I was nɔ longer the "Elephant;" but there was a boy whom they called "Rhinoceros,' and two others, the Biffords, whose names, up to the time of their leaving, were "Fatty" and "Puggy."

Alice thought these vulgar.

"I hate anything vulgar in names," she said; "and I don't think I like funny names; they ought to be stopped, unless they're exactly suited to the people."

"Nelly's a funny name," observed Dick, who had now joined the party. "Nelly's my eldest sister," explained Austin.

"Elder, Austin, not eldest. The comparative must be used where there are two, the superlative where there are more."

"Dear me !" ejaculated her mother, pretending to perk herself up. Elders who are unacquainted with the process of extracting the yolk of an egg by suction, do not like being instructed on the subject by juniors, even when the

instruction is conveyed obliquely. ball striking you just as it glances off an angle of a wall hits hard. Besides, flesh and blood feel the blow; the wall, first struck, did not.

"We're very particular," she added ironically.

"If we are to learn grammar, let us speak it," said Alice.

"And what," I asked, becoming bolder, "is your elder sister's name?" "McCracken," answered Alice, with a sparkle of fun in her eyes.

It was impossible not to laugh. We We all laughed, except Mamma, who begged us to consider what an excellent housewife sister Nelly was; and what a good man Mr. McCracken.

"Ah!" exclaimed Alice, moving to the table, "he's so dreadfully low."

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"Low! my dear Alice!" cried Mrs. Comberwood, quite startled: I never heard you say such a thing before, and I hope I never shall again. Of your brother-in-law too! Low! he's a perfect gentleman-and a clergyman-and you who say you have so much respect for the clergy

"So I have, Mamma. For all clergymen on account of their office, not for their individual opinions. I was speaking of Andrew McCracken as a clergyman. Of course he's a gentleman, or Nelly wouldn't have married him. As a gentleman, he is what he ought to be. As a clergyman, he is what he ought not to be."

66 "But you called him 'low,' Alice," Mrs. Comberwood reminded her.

"Well, dear, I thought you would have known that Low' meant Low Church-Evangelical."

"He has a right to his opinions: though, as far as I go, and I go quite far enough, I'm sure, I think Nelly might manage to have the service more cheerfully conducted."

"She gives in to him," said Alice, with a toss of the head.

"Ah!" said her mother, thinking, perhaps, that at this point it would be as well to drop the subject. Alice was sharp enough, she was perfectly aware, to have seen long since that Mr. Com

berwood's wishes were not quite law in his own house, any more than they were in the courts where he professionally appeared as solicitor instructing. counsel. I found myself in a new world. What did I know of Low, High, Evangelical, Anglican, and such terms at that age? Nothing at all. I just remembered having heard Dr. Carter telling the senior usher how, on being invited to some clerical meeting in the neighbourhood, he and two friends had appeared in their black gowns, while the others were all in surplices and hoods. Mrs. Carter denounced this as tomfoolery, and we boys (at dinner) unconsciously imbibed her notion (if any at all) on this subject. The matter was one in no way interesting to me. Had I not been invited to take a part in some New Year's festivities, and to pass a merry holiday-time at Ringhurst? Undoubtedly.

Between seven and eight the steam of a great fuss pervaded the house. There was bustling among servants, fireswere suddenly and savagely attacked, logs were piled on recklessly, chamber candles were reviewed in a line on the hall table, where they appeared in heavy marching order, armed with their burnished extinguishers and their snuffers by their side. Then the family mustered in the hall.

The master was expected every minute. In point of fact he had already passed his usual time. Mamma's anxiety showed itself in the various reasons she gave to prove that there was no cause for it. Nor was there.

"He's not a bit later than he was last night," said Dick.

"Rather earlier, if Papa comes now," observed Alice, walking to the door.

We heard the wind threatening outside, as much as to say boldly," Coming! Of course he's coming; only mind I'm against him to-night, and the more I try to keep him back the more urgent will he be to press forward." Then the voice was lost among the firs and larches, as with a sharp gritty sound, the sharper and the more gritty as it neared the hall

door, came the wheels of the dog-cart, broken by the horse's slinging trot, like the conductor's bâton beating common time on a wooden desk to the opening of the overture to "Semiramide." The last fortissimo, the last bar, and the bell was rendered unnecessary, though rung, by the rapidity wherewith the butler threw open the front door.

First came Mr. Comberwood's voice.
Then some of Mr. Comberwood's par-

cels; for he was of that order of paterfamilias which looks upon fish in a straw-plaited basket from London as a peace-offering for venial sins.

"Now, Stephen, do come in," urged his wife.

Then Stephen Comberwood came in. As, however, he is a very big man, and a person of some importance, I must beg leave to reserve his description for the commencement of the next chapter.

To be continued.

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