pleasantly; and when we joined the ladies in the drawing-room, the good
vicar's enthusiastic little wife came to meet us, in one of her honest
little raptures.

'Now, here's a thing worth your looking at! Did you ever see anything so
bee-utiful in your life? It is such a darling little thing; and--look
now--is not it magnificent?'

She arrested the file of gentlemen just by a large lamp, before whose
effulgence she presented the subject of her eulogy--one of those costly
trifles which announce the approach of Hymen, as flowers spring up before
the rosy steps of May.

Well, it was pretty--French, I dare say--a little set of tablets--a
toy--the cover of enamel, studded in small jewels, with a slender border
of symbolic flowers, and with a heart in the centre, a mosaic of little
carbuncles, rubies, and other red and crimson stones, placed with a view
to light and shade.

'Exquisite, indeed!' said Lord Chelford. 'Is this yours, Mrs. Wylder?'

'Mine, indeed!' laughed poor little Mrs. Dorothy. 'Well, dear me, no,
indeed;'--and in an earnest whisper close in his ear--'a present to Miss
Brandon, and the donor is not a hundred miles away from your elbow, my
lord!' and she winked slyly, and laughed, with a little nod at Wylder.

'Oh! I see--to be sure--really, Wylder, it does your taste infinite
credit.'

'I'm glad you like it,' says Wylder, chuckling benignantly on it, over