could call Captain Du Meresq a flirt. Why, he has hardly spoken ten words
to me yet,"--but a sudden glow came to her cheeks as she remembered how
many he had looked.

"Well, well, I was only warning you. Fetch the backgammon board; your
mother has won seven games and I nine since you went."

Bluebell complied, and, settling the ladies on either side of a
papier-maché table, opened the piano, and began dreamily playing through
the music of the night before. Trove, finding the door ajar, had pushed
in, and lay near the instrument, listening in that strange way some dogs
do if the tones come from the heart, and not merely the fingers.

Having got through the last evening's _répertoire,_ she sat musing on the
music-stool, and then crooned rather low an old song of her mother's,
beginning,--

"They tell me thou art the favoured guest
In many a gay and brilliant throng;
No wit like thine to wake the jest,
No voice like thine to raise the song."

"Oh! that is too old-fashioned," said Mrs. Leigh, and Miss Opie coughed
dryly. But why need Bluebell have blushed so consciously, as she dashed
into Lightning galops and Tom Tiddler quadrilles, till Trove, like a dog
of taste, took his offended ears and outraged nerves off to his lair in
the lobby?

His fair mistress soon after sought her bower, a scantily furnished
retreat, but, like most girls' rooms, taking a certain amount of