not looking, I hope;" and, well satisfied with her casuistry, Miss O'Reilly read aloud the following paragraph

"I have already compared Miss Geraldine Southwell to a princess of romance; but, oh, my dear Harley! to what shall I liken Matilda? Imagine, my friend, a figure, noble, lofty, and commanding-a Medici lip, a Napoleon nose, and, oh! the most distracting, most soul-bewitching eyes! Lady Louisa Southwell is a fine woman, with features strongly marked, apparently more from care than age. To describe the ladies in short-were I to avail myself of an architectural comparison, 1 should assimilate Geraldine to the romantic Alhambra of Grenada; Miss Southwell, to the all-perfect Maison Carrée at Nismes; and lady Louisa-I think she shall be the awful, yet still-interesting Ruins of Palmyra."

66

Upon my word! and what am I to be?-a smoke-dried cabin, I suppose! That is a pretty how-d'ye-do, Mr. Cobham Pendennis!"

dennis!" exclaimed Miss O'Reilly, using, in affected pique, a cant phrase she was very fond of. "I shall never forgive you, dear Matilda, if you don't, some way or other, contrive to avenge such an affrontive omission for me."

To this Miss Southwell had not the least objection. Once certain of her power, she used it in the most unmerciful manner. Sometimes it was by keeping her devoted victim practising the intricacies of a new quadrille, when she knew he would be severely reprimanded by his uncle for absenting himself from his post in the school. Sometimes she would accord him the supreme felicity of driving her, during school-hours, in a low phaeton, constructed under her direction, anticipating, with well-concealed malice, the re proof that awaited him for nonattendance at Mount Parnassus. But these were his moments of happiness. When Matilda had thus exalted him to the highest pitch of delight, suddenly she would assume all

the pride of a daughter of sir Charles Southwell, and turn on the presumptuous youth some of those cold, forbidding looks that dash the intoxicating hopes raised by a smile of encouragement. Still Cobham continued the most devoted of her slaves. Anxious to anticipate her slightest wish, he flew to the neighbouring libraries to procure books and music for her, carried her messages to the milliner, and gave his opinion on her lapdog when he was sick. The elder Pendennis, or, if the reader chooses, Pendennis the Great, still continued, at intervals, his work on Ireland. Was Miss Southwell tempted to accom pany him on an excursion, to visit some new object of curiosity, Cobham carried her sketchbook, fell into ecstacies at every scrawl she made, or extolled the new graces which the attitude of drawing imparted to her already-elegant form. Did lady Louisa and Geraldine Southwell set out on a benevolent ramble, in which case Matilda never accompanied them—or was

Miss O'Reilly engaged in the superintendence of domestic concerns-instantly, unless there was other company at Meadowscourt, Cobham ran over to Mount Parnassus, in an agony of obsequiousness, to summon one or other of his sisters to preserve Miss Southwell from herself!-" Diana! sister! Miss Southwell has already been a quarter of an hour alone! Lay by your stitchery, and come along with me. -Olivia! give me that novel you are reading-I have promised it to Miss Southwell; you can finish it another time.Bridget, you would oblige me greatly not to talk of religion before Miss Southwell; it is excessively shocking, and annoys her horribly!"

To such devoted attachment Matilda could not remain quite insensible. She had been several winters at the Castle, and, though called a fine woman by successive lord-lieutenants, admired by the aid-de-camps, and followed for the two or three first winters, had reason to fear she

was classed in that number of ladies "who can make nets, but cannot make cages." The languid attentions too of a lounger of fashion, who thinks he confers as much honour as he receives, were very different from the respectful, yet unremitting assiduities of a Cobham.

As it is impossible to calculate upon the actions of a character in which the passions are strong and the judgment weak, there is no saying how this unequal flirtation might have ended, had it been permitted to live out the term of its natural life; but this was prevented by an incident sufficiently ridiculous, and in which Miss Southwell's pride, as she called it, was too much compromised, to permit her readily to forgive.

Miss Southwell, attended by her faithful esquire Cobham, and the merry damsel Diana, mounted on her palfrey, was, one morning, taking an airing, on horseback, in the direction of Mount Parnassus, when Diana observed, as if accidentally, that, as