My favourite school friend had been Frances Delville. She was within three months of my own age, and peculiarly attractive in person. She was exquisitely fair and sylph-like, and distinguished by a profusion of the most luxuriant flaxen ringlets. Her manner was timid, but graceful; and she was remarkable for the simplicity of her dress. She left school, to live with her parents in the country. We exchanged a few letters; but our correspondence gradually declined, and I knew not whether Frances Delville were married, dead, or, like myself, a spinster of a certain age, till the evening when I entered the crowded rooms of a fashionable dame of my acquaintance. I walked through the apartment leaning on the arm of Mr. Walcot, a somewhat cynical old bachelor, who had been dining at our house; we entered the dancing-room in the midst of a quadrille, which seemed to excite much attention, and I heard an audible murmur of admiration at the grace and beauty of a young lady who was one of the dancers. My eyes were riveted on her. She was delicately fair, slender, and graceful in form; and Lavinia herself could not more thoroughly have disdained" the foreign aid of ornament:" her snowy muslin robe was unornamented by ribbons or flowers, and her profuse flaxen ringlets did not even display the string of pearls or simple white rose which novelists are fond of assigning to their heroines. The dance concluded, and her partner was leading her to a seat. I must speak to that young lady," I exclaimed to my companion. "Who could have supposed that I should meet her here?"

"It is her first party in town, I have just heard," replied Mr. Walcot. "Were you introduced to her lately?"

"Oh!" I said with a smile, "you little suspect how well I used to know Frances Delville."

"Pardon me," he observed, drawing me back, "but you must be deceived by a resemblance. This young lady's name is Holford, and she has only just arrived with her parents from Devonshire."

"Do allow me, Mr. Walcot," I said, rather peevishly, "to remember my favourite school friend."

Mr. Walcot looked at me with an expression of countenance that showed he suspected me to be a fit inmate for a lunatic asylum.

"Are you really in earnest, my dear Miss Musgrave?" he said. "Can you actually persuade yourself that you went to school with a tender juvenile,' who cannot be more than seventeen ?"

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"I think," said a good humoured, countrylooking gentleman who stood close to us, that if you will give me leave, I can clear up the mystery. I am the father of the young lady whom you honour by your approbation: her mother's maiden name was Frances Delville; and I have frequently heard her mention her early friend, Miss Musgrave. She is now in the adjoining room, and I am sure will be delighted to renew her acquaintance with you."

I eagerly expressed my anxiety to see her, and Mr. Holford departed to seek her. I expected to see a somewhat matured and sobered resemblance of the fair young creature whom I had just been admiring, when, to my great astonishment, Mr. Holford approached me with a fat, fair, smiling woman hanging on his arm : she had a fixed colour in each cheek, and a stiff array of large, light curls appeared from beneath her white and gold turban. There was nothing remarkable in the material or shape of her dress, but she had displayed somewhat of peculiar ingenuity in loading herself with elaborate trinkets; she had a necklace round her throat, a

F

buckle round her waist, and a ferronière round her head, bracelets on her arms, rings on her fingers, and I had almost said “bells on her toes;" | but she had gold ornaments on her white satin slippers, which did duty for them. Had not Mr. Holford introduced her as his wife, I should have considered her a stranger.

"Oh! Frances," I exclaimed, forgetting all courtesy in my surprise, "how are you altered! I should not have known you again."

"I dare say not," she replied, laughing good humouredly: "I have no doubt I am more altered than you are, for I think I should have said in any company that you had a great look of my old friend Althea Musgrave. As for me, I know I am quite a different being: I used to be a poor, fragile, delicate creature; but ease, contentment, and the Devonshire air brought about in me the improvement that you see.'

I

Improvement! I was really electrified! had sometimes been disposed to blame my own vanity in still clinging to the reputation of loveliness; but here was this vulgarized beauty, this sylph transformed into a lump of mortality, actually glorying in her degradation, and fancying herself handsomer than she had ever been in her life. And her husband stood by, neither surprised nor indignant at her folly, but evidently partaking of her blindness, and concluding that I must be delighted with the effect of her improved and ripened attractions. "Do you not think Frances very like what I was at her age?" she inquired.

"Very much so," I replied, glad that I could at length answer her both with sincerity and courtesy ; "she is a lovely girl.”

"I am glad you see the likeness," replied Mrs. Holford, looking at her fair daughter with more of anxious fondness than of admiration: "she is very delicate, and I have sometimes been disposed to apprehend consumption; but all my old friends tell me that I had just the same appearance at her age, therefore it is probable that twenty years hence she may look just

as I do now."

"What a dreadful prediction!" I said to myself.

"It is strange enough," resumed Mrs. Holford, "that Frances inherits my girlish caprice for plain dressing. I think that her white frock makes her appear more pale than she really is. I wished her to wear a pink satin dress, festooned with roses, and silver flowers in her hair: she would have looked quite another thing if

she had followed my advice."

"She would, indeed," I returned, horrified at the idea of arraying the Houri then flitting before me, in the tawdriness of second-rate finery.

"She is your eldest child, of course?" I remarked, after a moment's pause.

Not quite of course," replied Mrs. Holford, smiling: "I am eight-and-thirty, as none can know better than yourself; I married soon after I left school, and my eldest son is now a fine young man of nineteen, pursuing his studies at Oxford; he is very clever, and I doubt not will

take high honours. I have a girl of fourteen at school, much handsomer than Frances, the picture of bloom and health; and I have two little boys at home. But I am not quite easy about them: I think their health is precarious."

"Never fear, Frances," interrupted her hus band, kindly, "they will do well, I have no doubt, under your excellent care; they have the advantage of a mother whose attentions are unremitting. You only knew my dear wife, Miss Musgrave," he continued, turning to me, “when she was young, and her character was unformed: you cannot have an idea of her valuable quali ties as a wife and mother; but I assure you they cannot easily be forgotten by those who have witnessed and experienced them."

Mrs. Holford put her hand over her hus band's lips, as a hint that his display of conjugal affection was not quite in keeping with the sur rounding scene; but she need not have feared my ridicule.

I was touched and affected with Mr. Holford's speech; and notwithstanding his broad, red face, and boisterous tone of voice, I felt that there was something poetical in this spontaneous ebullition of his feelings, and I looked on my school friend as an enviable woman. True, she had lost the refinement of her youth, but she had gained happiness in the exchange; the eye of the stranger no longer dwelt with delight on her slender figure and girlish grace; but he to whom she had plighted her troth beheld her with daily increasing admiration: she was the chosen of his youth, the mother of his children; and secure in her principles, and happy in her affections, he not only bore unrepiningly the loss of her beauty, but the mingled magic of love and custom induced him to believe that it still continued in even more than its original brightness. An artist would have been misera ble at the increasing coarseness of her person, and a poet at that of her manners; but she was not united to an artist or a poet, but to "an honest man, the noblest work of God," and she was still in his eyes the best and fairest of her sex. Yes, I felt that notwithstanding my undiminished elegance, Mrs. Holford was both a more useful member of society, and a happier woman than myself; she need not shrink from the sarcastic glance of the mocking girl, or heave a bitter sigh at the galling sneer of the empty coxcomb: she had children to caress her, a husband to love her, a home to receive her, a household to respect her, and my eyes filled with tears, as I drew a rapid contrast between her lot in life and my own.

The next morning I was diverted from a renewal of the contemplations of the preceding evening by the unexpected arrival of a letter from Dora to my mother.

During the last year, Madame de Meronville had been travelling with Dora and Katherine through Italy, Switzerland, and Germany; they had remained sometime at Carlsbadt, and had there become acquainted with the young and handsome Baron Walstein, who im mediately attached himself to their party, and

when they returned to Paris, very shortly fol- | lowed them thither. The company at Carlsbadt were divided as to his motive; some thought that he sought a congenial spirit to his own in the dark-eyed and animated Katherine, some considered that love always desires a contrast, and that the fair-haired and gentle Dora was his magnet of attraction. Both parties were wrong; in a week after the Baron's arrival in Paris, Madame de Meronville became his bride! The day after her marriage, the Baroness Walstein kindly and considerately informed her nieces that she had for a considerable time felt great compunction of conscience at detaining them so long from their parents, that she feared she had acted a very selfish part in so doing; but now that she had obtained a companion for life, she no longer could make a shadow of excuse to herself in continuing to monopolize their society, and she had therefore come to the conclusion that she should be performing a necessary although a painful duty by relinquishing them to the kind father, mother, and sister, who certainly had the best right to them.

"After such an intimation," Dora wrote, "we could not do otherwise than profess ourselves ready to comply with her wishes; an English family of the name of Brunton, with whom we are intimate, intend to return to England in a week, and have offered to take charge of us. Mr. Brunton strenuously advises our departure, as he has ascertained that my aunt has not taken the precaution of having any part of her property settled on herself, and her husband bears the reputation of being a confirmed gambler; we trust that you will not be incommoded by this unexpected change in our plans."

My father broke out into violent anathemas on the folly, selfishness, and want of feeling displayed by the Baroness Walstein; and echoed his sentiments, declaring that it was a very sad affair indeed, and much to be lamented. My mother, however, did not seem to consider the business so deplorable as I should have imagined she would have done. "After all," she said, with a well got up maternal sigh, "Dora and Katherine are our own children, and we ought to feel an interest in them; several persons who have seen them on the Continent have told me that they are very lovely, stylish girls, and as Althea's admirers seem all to have deserted her, I am sure it will be a very great satisfaction to her to witness the triumphs of her younger sisters. Poor Dora has written me an exceedingly pleasing, amiable letter, and I shall certainly send her an affectionate

answer."

I did not give my mother much credit for this sudden outbreak of natural fondness; I imputed it to the selfish vanity of wishing to shine in the reflected light of her daughter's beauty, and feared that I should be deemed a faded flower by her when compared to the newly-blown roses who were so shortly to enliven our dwelling. Yet if displeased with my mother, I was not at all better pleased with myself, I took myself severely to task for the

coldness and indifference which I felt towards my sisters, and resolved that I would meet them with every disposition to admire and love them, relinquish all the honours of admiration in their favour, and consider the radiance of my former position in society as "the light of other days," merely casting a faint beam on my present shady path in the valley of humiliation.

At length Dora and Katherine arrived, and I found the first part of my prescribed duty very easy; it was impossible to look at them without admiring them. Dora was beautifully fair, with large soft blue eyes, demurely peeping through fringed eyelashes, and a mouth that reminded the beholder of the words of an old song— "The bud of the rose,

In the morning that blows,
Impearl'd with the dew."

Katherine was not so regularly beautiful, but more attractive; she was a sprightly brunette, with pearly teeth, dimpled cheeks, and laughing dark eyes, and well deserved the title instantaneously bestowed upon her by my father, of— "Kate, the prettiest Kate in Christendom !"

In figure I can only say that my sisters were about the middle height-it is very difficult to give an account of the precise figures of young ladies dressed according to the last Parisian fashion.

If the persons of Dora and Katherine were thus improved by the lapse of eight years, their manners had undergone a corresponding alteration for the better. Sometimes we hear of persons so eminently social and warm-hearted, that, after many years' absence, they take up the point of intimacy with their friends exactly where they laid it down, without even an intervening five minutes of coldness and embarrassment. My sisters far excelled these amiable people: they were much more sociable with us on the evening of their return than they had ever been in their days of juvenility; they courteously hoped that the little attacks of gout to which my father had been subject had not increased; they inquired whether the plants in my mother's conservatory did as much credit to her taste and care as in former days; and they trusted that I kept up my music, and that they should have the pleasure of frequently singing with me. All mauvaise honte had disappeared; they had evidently been in the habit of considering it a duty to make themselves generally agreeable; and my father and mother, who, like ninety-nine people out of a hundred, did not know how to distinguish between manner and mannerism, were immeasurably delighted with their polished good-breeding, and saw nothing tutored or artificial in the excess of it. father, whose usual custom it was to go to sleep in the evening, sat animated and wide awake in honour of his recovered offspring; and the transport of my mother was so great, that she could not resist paying me a visit that night in my dressing-room, to inflict on me her raptures concerning the person, dress, mind, and manners of my sisters. "And how overjoyed they

My

The ensuing week confirmed me in my early opinion that Dora and Katherine were not affectionate, and that, although beautiful and plausible, they were far from being either artless or amiable. Dora, although apparently quiet and tranquil, was in reality shrewd and scheming; she had a soft, sly way of insinuating herself into the good graces of those whose favour she wished to conciliate, and of meekly and perseveringly depreciating her rivals, which rarely failed of success. Katherine was different in manners-she was brisk, animated, and ready at repartee; but she resembled her sister in the constant, undeviating care of her own interest. I soon found that my sisters, notwithstanding their newly-acquired fondness for their dear parents!" were not inclined to favour me with any demonstrations of affection; not that they pursued an open warfare with me, on the contrary, they were most soothing and sympathising in condoling with me on various occasions. They should not have known me again, I was looking so terribly thin and pale; they were sure crowded, over-heated ball-rooms must be very prejudicial to me; I really ought to give myself a little relaxation from the fatigues of society; my voice had grown sharp, it was impossible to sing with me; they concluded I had given up dancing for some years, they believed thirty was considered the proper age for doing so in England. Many other civil sarcasms of this kind did they address to me; and so kind was the tone of Dora, so ingenuous the manner of Katherine in doing so, that my father and mother evidently considered me very ill-tempered when I returned cold and brief answers to their sisterly queries. I could not help thinking how different a position I should have occupied in society as the wife of Thornton; then my sisters would have been glad to avail themselves of my introduction to my friends, and I should perhaps have been surrounded with a family of my own, and have rejoiced in the beauty and popularity of Dora and Katherine as a symbol of the triumphs in store for my fair daughters.

The entrance of my sisters into the London world was eminently successful; they came at a fortunate time; people were sadly in want of a new beauty. There were several juvenile faces in the field, but they were plain ones; and Miss Holford had caught cold the second week of her stay in London, and had been hurried back to Devonshire by her anxious parents, there, I doubt not, to grow plump, inelegant, useful, and happy, like her mother. Dora and Katherine had another great advantage--although new faces, and in their brightest bloom, they were free from all the awkwardness ascribed by Lord Byron to the newly-come-out young lady

"So much alarmed that she is quite alarming;

All giggle, blush, half-pertness, and half-pout."

If I had experienced some neglect in society before the arrival of Dora and Katherine, it is scarcely necessary to say that the symptoms of this neglect became much more marked and frequent at an after period. When I entered into a drawing-room with my mother, I could still consider myself and be considered by others as somewhat of a youthful belle; 'tis true that "time had thinned my flowing hair," but it looked juvenile beside my mother's dress-hat and feathers, and the quiet-coloured satin which had supplanted my girlish white drapery was not so matronly as her black velvet dress and point lace pelerine; but now, when I appeared in company with two blooming, beautiful, gossamer-robed nymphs, comparisons to my disadvantage could not fail to be drawn, and I was once believed to be the maiden aunt of Dora and Katherine, a mistake which afforded great entertainment to all the family but myself. Yet let it not be supposed that it was the loss of popular admiration which alone made me unhappy: it was the evident and daily increasing indifference of my father and mother to me which wounded my feelings; the wishes, pleasures, and caprices of Dora and Katherine were consulted on every occasion, while I remained neglected and uncared for; in fact, it was more than hinted to me that I ought to retire into the background, that three daughters were too many to take constantly into society, and that it would be cruel to separate Dora and Katherine, who had been companions from their cradle. These mortifications had the effect of a constantly falling drop of water in wearing my health and my spirits, and my thoughts more frequently than ever reverted to Thornton; he was now Colonel Thornton, he had lately left India, his father was dead, and he was residing on his paternal estate in Glouces tershire-this I knew from report, but I had no wish to meet him again. Nothing but sorrowful reflections were connected with the past, nothing but degradation with the present, nothing but gloom with the future. I had also the trial of seeing an evident diminution of the regard and respect formerly shown towards me by several families with whom we associated on terms of intimacy; and it was clearly apparent to me that my sisters had been bespeaking their sympathy for the oppression and unkindness which they suffered from me. I was led to this conclusion by the exaggerated and vehement praises of Dora and Katherine with which these friends always entertained me when in private, praises to which I could not conscientiously give other than a cold reply; when I was sure to be edified by some exceedingly improving remark on "the excellence of sisterly affection, and the little-mindedness of envy." I had, however, one source of triumph over my sisters; although they were quite as much admired as I had been in my most successful days, they did not meet, like me, with offers of marriage: my suitors had been as firm and constant as those of Penelope, but their admirers, like those of Calypso, seemed, after a short residence on the enchanted island, to be very glad to get away