MR. FREDERICK FALCONER arrived at the Chase just as the ladies were going to sit down to luncheon. The ladies were Miss Immy and the Lindisfarn lasses. And they were about to partake of that meal specially sacred to ladies and ladies' men alone. It was a great opportunity for Freddy. There was neither Lady Farnleigh nor Mr. Mat. In the presence of either of those persons, Mr. Freddy was, as the old story records Punch to have declared himself to have felt when Mrs. Carter who translated Epictetus was among his audience, unable to "talk his own talk." Freddy Falconer could not talk his own talk, when either Lady Farnleigh or Mr. Mat was present.

But on the present occasion all evil influences were absent, and all good ones were in the ascendant. There was Miss Immy in high good humour; there was the minced veal and mashed potatoes; beautiful golden-coloured butter, and the home-made loaf; a currant tart, and a bowl of Sillshire cream! There was the decanter of sherry for Miss Immy; the small jug of amber ale for Miss Kate, the carafe of sparkling water for Miss Margaret. The malignant fairy godmother was far away up in her wind-swept garden at Wanstrow; the Squire was beating the turnips in a distant field, and the odious Mr. Mat was trudging by his side. Had ever a ladies' man a fairer field? Nor can it be by any means said that he had no favour!

Both the young ladies, as we already know, were more or less favourably disposed towards him, each after her own fashion. And Miss Immy was one of those who are disposed to allow their fullest weight to the claims of old neighbourhood and long acquaintanceship. Freddy Falconer, too, had in her eyes the paramount advantage over either of the other two young men who had been there the previous evening, of being thorough Sillshire. Captain Ellingham and Mr. Merriton were both strangers and new acquaintances, which made a very notable difference to Miss Immy.

"And what do you think of our new importations into Sillshire?" asked Kate, when Fred had been cordially asked to take some luncheon, and was comfortably established by the side of one of the young ladies, and opposite to the other. Kate was sitting opposite to Miss Immy, and Margaret on the side of the table nearest the fire, between them. Mr. Fred therefore took the goods the gods provided him—i.e., minced

veal, potatoes and sherry, currant tart and Sillshire cream-in a position yet more shone on by the rays of beauty than that of Philip's warlike son at the Royal feast for Persia won !—a position more brilliant, but more difficult also than that of Alexander.

"What did you think of our new importations into Sillshire?" said Kate.

"The Merritons, or Captain Ellingham? Which are you alluding to?"

"To both. But you knew the Merritons before, did you not ?"

"Not I! I never set eyes on either of them till they came down here. They were old friends, I fancy, of our business connexions in London. I think my father had seen Mr. Merriton in London."

"Quite a young man he seems," said Kate.

"Oh yes! A boy rather, one might say. He has just come of age. And upon my word he looks as if an English winter would do for him. Poor fellow! I should say he would have done more wisely to settle in his mother's country-in Italy-where he has spent most part of his life."

Oh, in Italy?" said Margaret. "He told me yesterday at dinner that he had lived abroad 'most of his life.""

"Yes, and when a man has done that, he is rarely fit for English life in any way."

"Oh, don't say so, Mr. Falconer; or I shall fancy that I am not fitted for English life, or that you don't think me so," said Margaret, with a look of the most tenderly appealing reproachfulness in her eyes, as pathetically eloquent as if she had been expecting her doom from the arbiter of her destiny.

"Nay! it is quite a different thing in the case of a lady," said Freddy, colouring a little. "The foreign ways and manners, which are apt to make a man perhaps not altogether. what ladies like in this country or gentlemen, indeed, either, for that matter-only serve to add new grace to one of the other sex. Besides, there is a vast difference between Italy and Paris. There is, as all the world knows, no charm equal to that of a Parisian woman," said Mr. Freddy, with the enthusiasm of intense conviction.

"Is there no chance then for poor home-bred Zillshire volk?" asked Kate, with a laugh in her voice, and roguish quizzing in her eyes, and just the least little bit of pique in her heart.

"Now, Miss Kate, you know how far that is from my feeling in the matter. Surely you and I are much too old friends to misunderstand each other upon such a point."

The position was a difficult one. The worst of it was, that there was no possiblity of making any by-play with the eyes! What the tongue says may almost always be modified sufficiently for all purposes, if one

can but find the means of supplying a running commentary with the eyes, addressed to one special reader. But Fred's situation, with one lady opposite to him, and one at right angles to him, shut him out from that resource ;-unless, indeed, from such very limited use of it as could be resorted to by seizing and making the most of the opportunities afforded him by the momentary employment of one of the two pairs of bright eyes, under the cross-fire of which he was sitting, on a plate or a drinking-glass. And even so there was very little good to be done with Kate in this fashion, unless it was in the way of laughing. Kate would laugh with you or at you, with her eyes, as much as you pleased— would answer a laugh in your eyes, and answer it openly or aside, as the case needed. But she did not seem to understand any tenderer eye-language. Or if she did, she would not talk it with Freddy Falconer, old friends as they were.

And that was the reason why, after that luncheon-table campaign was over, Fred felt that he had made more progress that day with Miss Margaret than with Miss Kate.

As regarded Mr. Merriton, however, he found the latter more inclined to agree with him than the former. Notwithstanding Kate's wish to be goodnatured, and to make herself and their new neighbourhood generally agreeable to the strangers, and the reality of the interest she had expressed to Mr. Merriton about Italy and Italian places and things, he had seemed to her rather a feckless sort of body rather a poor creature. And Kate was about the last girl in the world to like a man who belonged in any degree to the category of "poor creatures," or to admit that the absence of manliness and vigour could be atoned for by elegance of manner and advantages of person. She was not disposed to undervalue his capacity for assisting her in her study of Dante. But she would have been more inclined to like him, if her attention had been called to his capacity for riding well up to hounds. Doubtless she would have preferred a cavalier equally calculated to shine in the field and in the study; but if one good quality out of the two could be had only, I take it Kate would have decided for the hounds, and Dante would have gone to the wall. I do not say, be it observed, that Kate Lindisfarn was a very charming girl because of this; I only say that she was a very charming girl, and that such was the case. As for Margaret, she would have cared nothing at all about the riding to hounds; and truth to say, very little indeed about the capacity for understanding Dante. And, as we know, she was "a very charming girl," too. But some of the value of that phrase of course depends upon the object on whom the charm operates, and by whom it is recognised. Now there can be no doubt at all that Margaret was a very particularly charming girl to Mr. Falconer, despite her disagreeing with him about Mr. Merriton.

"For my part," said she, shooting across the table one of those glances with which young ladies, who are properly up in all the departments of eye language, know how to render such a declaration rather agreeable than otherwise to the receiver of it-"For my part, I think you are too hard upon poor Mr. Merriton. It is unfair to expect that he should possess all the advantages which can only come from a wider and larger knowledge of the world."

"Really, Miss Margaret, I had no intention of being hard on him," said Falconer, returning her look with interest; "and I shall have less inclination than ever to be so, of course-(eye commentary here, intelligible to the merest tyro in that language)—if you take him under your protection."

"I did not mean to say a word," put in Kate; "and really I don't think there is a word to be said against his manner. It is that of a very young man, that is all."

"That is it," said Margaret avec intention, and looking as she spoke, not at her sister, but at Falconer, "I never can find such mere boys very agreeable."

"I agree with Mr. Frederick," said Miss Immy; "my notion is, that if the poor-wished lad had been born and bred in Zillshire, he would not have looked for all the world as though he had lived on sugar and water and sweet biscuits all his life, like Miss Lasseron's Italian greyhound!"

"And what about the other new comer among us?" said Falconer, not addressing himself to any one of the party more than to another. "What of Captain Ellingham ?"

"Now that is being harder than ever upon poor Mr. Merriton, to bring the two men into contrast in that way," cried Kate.

"Well! I confess I cannot agree with you there, Kate," said her sister. "If there is any hardness in the matter, I think it is all the other way, for my part."

"Oh, Margaret, how can you think so," said Kate with some emphasis.

"And I do not think Mr. Falconer had any notion of making a comparison that would be disadvantageous to Mr. Merriton, at all events," added Margaret.

"Indeed I had not," replied Falconer. "I found Captain Ellingham markedly civil; and I have not a word to say in his disparagement in any way. I do not doubt that he is a most able and meritorious officer, notwithstanding the position he occupies in the service. Of course, from merely passing an evening in a drawing-room with two men, one can form no opinion except as to their general exterior agreeability; and as far as that goes, I confess that I think Merriton has all the advantage."

"Why what in the world did you see in Captain Ellingham to make you take an aversion to him?" asked Kate.

"I did not take an aversion to him the least in the world, I assure you, my dear Miss Lindisfarn! On the contrary. But it seems that I only shared the impression he made upon your sister."

"I own that I did not see anything particularly attractive about him, notwithstanding all that Lady Farnleigh said in his praise," said Margaret.

"Is he a great friend of Lady Farnleigh's, then ?" asked Falconer. "Oh yes, and according to her, he is a chevalier sans peur et sans reproche;-a mirror of all the virtues! I dare say he may be; but. . . ." "Oh, Lady Farnleigh's approbation is quite sufficient to secure to the fortunate possessor of it that of your sister, Miss Margaret," said Falconer, with some little appearance of pique in his manner. "When you have been a little longer an inmate of the Chase, you will doubtless make that discovery for yourself."

"And if I pinned my faith upon anybody's judgment in all the world, I am very sure that I could not have a safer and better guide," cried Kate with some vehemence; "and I have no doubt Margaret will discover that too, before she has been here long. Perhaps I should be wiser," she added, with a momentary half glance at Falconer, "if I followed her guidance in all cases more implicitly."

"I am sure no one could doubt the excellence of Lady Farnleigh's judgment on any subject," said Freddy, looking rather discomfited; "but probably she was speaking of Captain Ellingham as of an old friend and contemporary of her own."

"Hardly that, I should think," said Kate. "Why how old a man should you take Captain Ellingham to be?"

"Well, he is one of those men who may be almost any age; but I should say he must be on the wrong side of forty," replied Falconer. "Impossible!" cried Kate. "I am no judge of people's ages; but to my notion Captain Ellingham seems quite a young man."

"A young man, Kate! why he is quite grey. I declare he looks every bit as old as Mr. Mat."

"He certainly is very grey, both on the head and about the beard," said Freddy; "but that is not the worst of it. There are certain lines

about the face.

"I don't think a man's appearance is at all injured by a few grey hairs among the black ones; and as for the lines, a face is far more interesting to me, that looks as if the owner had been doing something else all his life than thinking of taking care of it!" cried Kate, in her usual impetuous way, having been provoked into saying more than she would otherwise have done, by the spitefulness of Falconer's remarks, and by his attack on her with reference to Lady Farnleigh.