sweet on him, I'm thinking, and I'm not in for Pete's place."




CHAPTER II.

A RARE SOCIETY BOUQUET.


Come now and unroll with me one corner of the still, the silent past,
and I shall read you a few pictures in the old time life at Haughton
Hall, County Surrey, England.

This one, a twelvth night scene of 1854, will interest us: Scene is
one of the drawing-rooms at the fine old stately mansion of grey
stone, Elizabethan in its grandeur of tower and pinnacle, its spots of
decay lovingly draped by the hand of Dame Nature, ivy constant and
clinging as though its robes of green loved the old grey stone. The
south wing, built by a Haughton two hundred years ago (for his Spanish
bride noble as beautiful, an Espartero by birth) alone is lighted. We
shall glance through this window. Ah! a priest of the Anglican Church;
before him stands a girl beautiful as an angel; beside her a handsome
man, dark and bronzed; on the third finger of her left hand he slips
the ring of gold which binds them as closely as its unbroken circle. A
sweet woman lying on a lounge with the seal of death on her brow
before whom they kneel and receive her blessing. The actors are Ethel
Haughton, Captain Vernon, --th Light Cavalry, and the poor invalid who
only lived to give her daughter in marriage. On the 27th March, same
year, the British Lion and Russian Bear met in combat; our troops went