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Mrs. Vivian negatived this proposition decidedly for both; and Lady Giffard soon after leaving the room, the mother and daughter were alone together.

Well, Maud,' commenced the former; we have done well in coming; better than I anticipated. Lord Luton is at C, with his regiment, I find, and dines here today.'

Really,' exclaimed Maud; and then, as though ashamed to show the interest which she felt in the subject by pursuing it, she added, and whom else is this party to consist of?'

'Oh, his mother and sisters are coming, and the old set, as usual— Butlers, Forresters, and Thompsons, with one or two of Lord Luton's brother officers, and this Mr. Sutton. No country dinner-party is complete, I suppose, without a sprinkling of parsons.'

It will be terribly dull, I am afraid,' said Maud; Aunt Giffard's dinners are something awful. Simpson walks about the house as if oppressed already with the weight of the approaching festivities; the new page, Peter (there is always a new page at Aunt Giffard's), seems rawer than usual; when I asked him a question just now in the hall about our luggage, he stared at me incoherently, and then fled in despair.'

If there is anything which I abhor and detest,' said Mrs. Vivian, it is untrained servants.' Mrs. Vivian had no establishment of her own; her maid and Captain Vivian's valet, who accompanied them in their somewhat erratic existence, were, however, irreproachable in their several provinces.

You must be careful, I suspect, mamma, in your remarks on this Mr. Sutton. Did you notice that when you spoke of him Grace coloured, and seemed to recollect at once her important engagement in the village P

Ah! natural enough. Grace is cut out for a clergyman's wife; how very awkward she is.'

No, not awkward exactly,' said Maud; I was thinking her so much improved: she wants manner, but she has a good deal of natural grace.'

She cannot have acquired the

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most ordinary self-possession, my dear, to have betrayed herself in the way you speak of,' said Mrs. Vivian, conclusively; I am glad that you did not assent to your aunt's proposal of a walk; your journey has been fatigue enough for one day without making one's self stupid for the whole evening by violent exercise. Your aunt's walks are as tremendous as her dinners.'

For which last, I suppose, it will soon be time to dress,' said Maud. There, I see Grace trudging up towards the house. I shall retire, lest I should spoil my own appearance by listening too long to a description of the fascinations of Mr. Sutton.'

Lady Giffard had gone considerably out of her way in asking Lord Luton and the officers from Cto one of her dinners; but she was as much aware as either her sister or niece could be, that Compton was likely to prove but a dull house after the London season; and as Lord Luton's family lived in the neighbourhood, and had been old friends of her husband and herself, she gave the invitation with the hope of adding some vitality to what she had even herself sometimes felt to be the dulness of the same small circle. of the immediate neighbourhood, endlessly repeated.

Simpson was indeed a prey to no inconsiderable anxiety on this occasion; Lady Broadlands and her daughters were not frequent guests at Lady Giffard's, and they were to-day expected; Lord Luton and his fellow-Guardsmen sat yet more heavily upon the much enduring shoulders of poor Simpson, who was in truth the only responsible servant in Lady Giffard's household, for who could consider honest George, the coachman, transplanted from the familiar mysteries of the stables to the most unfamiliar ones of the dining-room, quite accountable for any crash or contretemps' which might occur through his instrumentality? Peter, the new page, would of course prove worse than useless. Happy indeed must the event be considered, if he did not precipitate the contents of a sauceboat over the aristocratic shoulders of Lady Broadlands, or revive, by some new aggression, in Mrs. Butler's ungentle breast, the

memory of that new breadth in her black velvet, necessitated last winter by the plate of vermicelli soup dropped from the awkward hands of his predecessor.

Why, then, give such a dinner with such a ménage? We anticipate the question from the of course 'gentle' and no doubt judicious reader. The subject is a wide one. When twenty years hence the writer of this poor silly story publishes that wise book of essays which it is his intention, should he live and learn so long, to give to the world, one of the most interesting and instructive of those dimly foreseen papers he intends should be on 'dinner-giving,' unless indeed during that space so great a change should have befallen the aspect of society that in the close and crowded rooms of a country rectory there shall not be found an absurd and uncomfortable representation of the ambitious festivities of the hall, and at the hall itself a scarcely less comfortless imitation of the yet more august entertainments of the castle. But before we proceed, we must emphatically excuse Lady Giffard from any peculiar tendency to exalt her own importance at the expense of the convenience of her guests: her parties were for the most part small, well assorted, and well managed, the deficiencies of her pages being on the whole rather less than greater than those of similar domestics in surrounding mansions; and for the present occasion we beg to relieve all fears or hopes of laughable casualties at the forthcoming banquet, for there was one in the house who, with less visible interest in the matter than that displayed by the venerable Simpson, had yet given his attention to the subject, and was determined that all should go off well. Foster, Captain Vivian's valet, was what is sometimes predicated of servants with such fortunate characteristics as his, a perfect treasure.' His interests, that is, were identified with those of the family which he served. Lord Luton had not been an almost daily visitor at the small house in Mayfair just vacated by the Vivians, without hopes springing up in the faithful bosoms of Mr. Foster and Mademoiselle Annette, certainly not less sanguine

than those entertained by the master and mistress whom they served. Both, after duly discussing the matter, had decided at once, upon hearing who were expected to grace it, that the party should be a great success; to which, when achieved, the honour shall be mostly attributed, is more than the impar tial writer of these pages is yet able to decide. Foster was indefatigable; he not only worked himself with a vigour that to one who knew him simply from the airs and graces of his usually languid supremacy of manner, might have seemed surprising, but he made all who could work also; if they could not, he quietly displaced them. He contrived yet more amazingly to keep each and all in good humour-no easy task; so that George and Peter were no less grateful to him for being relieved entirely from their prominence, and in great measure from all part, in the proceedings, than Simpson for the efficient help, which was given so adroitly that that solemn personage did not perceive until afterwards how entirely he had been superseded.

Lady Giffard, who always made a point of being in the drawing. room full a quarter of an hour before her guests might be expected to arrive, had but just descended, and was standing by the fire, holding almost her first conversation with Captain Vivian, when Lady Broadlands and her daughters, Lady Blanche and Lady Isabel Wareing, were announced: the Earl had excused himself from accompanying them. His one idea was 'punctu ality,' by which he understood always being too soon for an engagement, and this idea he had per sisted so successfully in impressing upon his household, that it had become the characteristic of his family as well as of himself. In vain on the present, as on many prior occasions, had his daughters made some symp toms of resistance, in spite of the carriage having been kept waiting as long as they could dare to keep it, and in spite of the coachman having driven as slowly as a coachman could be induced to drive, they were still a quarter of an hour in advance of the rest of the party. Lady Broadlands might have been

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once pretty, but she had now a round figure and face, and that placidity of temperament which commonly accompanies such an organisation. Her daughters were singularly like their father and one another, both being tall, pale, with sandy hair, long noses, and retreating foreheads. They seated themselves in a corner of the room, and commenced a voluble conversation with Grace. Mr. and Mrs. Butler were the next arrivals. Mr. Butler was tall, stout, positive, and consequential, a country squire of the old school, with a rooted aversion to London and London life, and a profound reverence for his county and himself. Mrs. Butler was also tall, but spare withal; she was attired in the best known of her well-known gowns, a mute reproach to Lady Giffard for the 'vermicelli' which had almost ruined her velvet. She was not usually an agreeable personage, nor was this occasion any unusual exception in this particular; indeed the mortification which she experienced on discovering Lady Broadlands and her daughters to be of the party, for which, had she known it (risking even the vermicelli), she would have dressed so differently, was sufficient to embitter her own enjoyment for the rest of the evening, and that of any with whom she might come into more immediate contact. The Forresters followed the Butlers, and the Thompsons the Forresters. Mr. Forrester was the young member for the county, very clever, but somewhat addicted to silence, for which his brilliant wife, Lady Elizabeth, made ample amends. Thompsons had lately come into the county, they were enormously rich, and had just bought the mag. nificent place of the ruined Lord L—; they were quiet and unpretending, and as they did not seem much to care for society, it was pressed upon them from all quarters. Then came Lord Luton and the officers, after whom Mr. Sutton.

The

The room was full-the conversation flagged-no one's attention was particularly engaged; it was the most happy moment for an effective entrance the door opened, Mrs. Vivian and Maud entered. Dress had been profoundly studied by

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Mrs. Vivian; her own black lace was perfect, but Maud's?-It was severely simple; white, and plain to the last degree; it fell in long folds of spotless drapery around her; the flower and leaf of the 'stephanotus' only were wreathed round the back of her dark hair. Simple as it all seemed, the dress was fresh from the hands of the first modiste in Paris, even the wreath had been brought from London, lest Lady Giffard's conservatory should not contain the flower, or in such perfection. She had never looked more lovely. Conspicuous as she had often been among the beauty and fashion of London drawing-rooms, Lord Luton had never been so struck with her charms as here, where everything contrasted and nothing came into competition with them. He was quickly at her side, and hinted in her gratified ear his regret at the mercilessness of etiquette, by which they would probably be separated in the order of the dining-room. She received his attentions almost coldly; the tact to which she had been educated was perfect. She might have acted upon his implied wish, and manoeuvred into his neighbourhood at dinner. She did nothing of the kind, she sat at the opposite extremity of the table, between Mr. Forrester and Mr. Sutton. Mr. Forrester's conversational powers wanted a very congenial atmosphere for their expansion-Maud did not supply that atmosphere, so he was more silent even than he usually was in society. Grace was upon the other side of Mr. Sutton; they were talking over the affairs of the parish during the earlier part of the dinner. Lord Luton's glances wandered continually from where he sat to the beautiful face which was opposite if not near to him. At last Mr. Sutton addressed Maud: the remark was commonplace enough, such as one usually ventures on to commence a conversation with a stranger. She answered graciously; it is not pleasant to sit silent at a dinner party, when all are talking round youshe even deigned to look at him. It was a very striking face; handsome it was, certainly, and high bred to the last degree, altogether different from what her imagination had

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and absorbed. It was the new rector.

CHAPTER II.

It was Sunday at Compton: when Mrs. Vivian and Maud descended, they found that Grace had some time since finished her early breakfast, and departed for the Sundayschool. It would be a great error in the reader, one which, with the judgment we attribute to him, he would be little likely to fall into, if he supposed that Mrs. Vivian would have spoken to any one nearer than her sister, as she did of clergymen, church schools and services. She could be enthusiastic about them all; indeed it was not long since, before the appearance of Lord Luton on the stage, she and Maud had severally and conjointly captivated a very young nobleman, deeply interested in such things, by the sympathetic feeling which they had displayed in them, but the young gentleman's castle was in Ireland, and such castles in those days were almost as visionary as those which our good neighbours across the Channel describe geographically as in Spain. There were three dowagers with life-interest in the estates, who left a very small remaining sum for the poor possessor of the ancestral title. He had therefore been quietly dropped for the present, and though he had not been left hopeless, his hopes had been severely tried, and if they still lingered, were sustaining him on the sunny shores of the Mediterranean, whither he had carried them with other freight and friends, in his beautiful yacht. The religion of the Vivians, like all about them, was undeniably correct; it had worshipped in the aesthetic temples of Belgravia, where the beautiful head of Maud, in bonnets scarcely less beautiful than itself, had often bowed. In the country, their devotion had always been more constant even, though not less conspicuous, than in town. Captain Vivian then, with his wife and daughter, naturally enough helped to fill the square roomy pew of Lady Giffard in the parish church at Compton. There was little change since they had last entered it in the

VOL. LIV. NO. CCCXXI.

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appearance of that ancient edifice, and that scarcely to be attributed to the new rector, as it consisted chiefly in a large memorial window of the least objectionable of modern stained glass, placed there by Lady Giffard in affectionate remembrance of Sir Walter, her late husband.

There was considerable change certainly in the manner in which the service was conducted, an earnestness and reverence felt which there had not been before. The singing was better, the fiddles were gone, there was little to torture the most refined ear, though there might not be much to pamper it.

Maud Vivian seldom sang in country churches, it spoils the voice; to-day she sang, not as she sometimes had done when she had deigned to do so, filling the whole building with her own glorious voice, till the startled school children paused, and the rustic congregation listened open-mouthed and silent. Quietly she to-day blended her powerful voice with Grace's weak one, sustaining but not overpowering the sinking treble of the school children. The sermon was a simple exposition of part of the service, earnest rather than eloquent. Maud was a little disappointed; she knew not why, but she had expected eloquence from Mr. Sutton. Mrs. Vivian did not attend the afternoon service, she declared herself unwell, which was indeed the case, though not her chief reason for staying at home; she had a considerable arrear of correspondence to make up, and Sunday afternoons were her great help on such occasions.

Captain Vivian and Maud accompanied Lady Giffard and Grace. If Maud had felt disappointed in Mr. Sutton's oratorical powers in the morning, she was the more startled

the display of them in the afteron. The sermon was upon 'Truth.' It nad one great fault, that it was intellectually above the mass of the congregation. The clear strong sentences fell with a certain sternness on the ear, which was compelled to listen to them; they seemed like the very voice of conscience itself, severe, upbraiding, fraught each with so strange a knowledge of the human heart, that more than Maud

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