refuse going amongst your old friends: you knew I should be frightened
by such fine people, and--"

"And we have been happy for more than eighteen years without them,
Kitty! My poor friends are not happy, and we are. To leave well alone
is a golden rule worth all in Pythagoras. The ladies of Bubastis, my
dear,--a place in Egypt where the cat was worshipped,--always kept
rigidly aloof from the gentlemen in Athribis, who adored the shrew-mice.
Cats are domestic animals, your shrew-mice are sad gadabouts: you can't
find a better model, any Kitty, than the ladies of Bubastis!"

"How Trevanion is altered!" said Roland, musingly,--"he who was so
lively and ardent!"

"He ran too fast up-hill at first, and has been out of breath ever
since," said my father.

"And Lady Ellinor," said Roland, hesitatingly, "shall you see her to-
morrow?"

"Yes!" said my father, calmly.

As Captain Roland spoke, something in the tone of his question seemed to
flash a conviction on my mother's heart, the woman there was quick; she
drew back, turning pale even in the moonlight, and fixed her eyes on my
father, while I felt her hand, which had clasped mine, tremble
convulsively.

I understood her. Yes, this Lady Ellinor was the early rival whose name
till then she had not known. She fixed her eyes on my father; and at