CHAPTER XXII.

ADMIRATION.

WELL, how do you like Mary ?" said Charlotte, a few days after her cousin's arrival, as she ran into her brother's study, no longer able to resist the desire of talking her over with him. "For my part, I wish she were a little more cheerful and amusable. Do you know she has never said that she admired her room, nor noticed the vases of flowers I took such pains to arrange. And all I say or do I can't make her laugh."

"You forget she has lost both her parents

within the last six months," said Hubert, and her father in such a dreadful way too. It would be unnatural for her to be gay or lively."

"That is true yet, still I can't fancy her anything but what she is; I fear she will always be the same; she is so very steady and sedate: so old too, older than you, and I have always thought you might be a hundred," said Charlotte, despondingly. "I am sure you sometimes look it when you are poring over that Greek; and do you know Mary understands Greek? I found her actually reading it this morning in her bedroom, and she said it was only the New Testament, and that she read it every day."

"Does she indeed ?"

"Yes, and then she said she knew nothing of French, and not a note of music; and she asked me to teach her," said Charlotte, with a slight air of conscious superiority.

"I am afraid you do not know enough of either for that, dear Charlotte. You never

play, except a waltz or so, and you can scarcely understand Voltaire."

"Well, you know, Hubert, I never could bear learning, those French verbs and things are so hopeless; and as to Madame de Sevigne's Letters that you gave me to read once, they might be all very interesting to the people to whom she wrote; but I much prefer a chat with Selina Flamborough or old Miss Podgkins, who tells me all the Ilminster news. And Voltaire was an infidel, so I need not take the trouble to make him out."

"Oh, and I want so to know how you think Frederick will like Mary," said Charlotte, after she had solaced herself with a few turns of waltz round the room: "you know he comes to-day. I am sure he will despise her, for he, hates blue-stocking ladies, and says that one

VOL. II.

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comfort is, I am no blue, like his aunt, Lady

Laura Mildew."

Hubert did not utter his thoughts, but he fancied Frederick would like Mary.

"What is that sound?" said Charlotte the next moment: "What is that? surely it is his voice."

"Yes," she continued, "it is Frederick cer

tainly come so early! and there, papa and

:

mamma are out. Somebody should receive him. Do go, dear Hubert," she added, hastily smoothing her hair and arranging her dress, for she was afraid of Frederick, though she disliked him. "Do you not hear his voice in the room underneath? He must be talking to Mary. Now, do come with me, Hubert."

"No; I can't leave this yet; don't be foolish, Charlotte; go to him now-you really ought; I must finish this exercise before dinner."

Hubert had given Mary that morning some

of Frederick's poetry to read, and it so happened that she had the fashionable Annual in which it was published, near her on the table, when the young Baronet entered the room.

She had been much struck by some of the passages which Hubert pointed out.

"Beautiful words," she thought as she read the lines, "and beautiful ideas too! and yet —yet— ”

What this "yet" was, she could not exactly define; but there was something in their spirit or tone that depressed her, and seemed not to be in harmony with her standard of good.

Yet she fully understood his meaning, and could enter into even the somewhat mystical and German style of the ideas, although she had never read any of the German philosophical works.

And her attention was rivetted by the lines, when she heard footsteps approach, and beheld a young stranger enter who she knew, from