CHAPTER XIV.

"Her brow

Lofty like this, her lips thus delicate,

Her neck thus queenly, and the sweeping curve

Thus matchless, from the small and 'pearl-round ear,' To the o'er polished shoulder."

"I FEEL So glad that you begin to understand me a little better, Mr. Sinclair," said Lady Florence, as leaning upon the arm of Julian, they sauntered through a sequestered and beautiful part of the Park. "It really grieved me when I first came to Oakwood, to see that you regarded me almost with an evil eye."

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Nay, Lady Florence," Julian replied in

that light tone of gallantry which means nothing, and of all others was the most displeasing to his fair auditor, who felt that hesitation and anxious denial of her charge would better evince the interest which was now the sole aim of all her actions to create in his bosom. "Nay, Lady Florence, you must better know your own manifold perfections than to indulge in such a supposition. Could an eye look evil on such bright curls as these ?" and with the easy familiarity which, scarcely known to himself, her caressing manners had encouraged in him, he touched the beautiful ringlets which a favourable zephyr had drawn from the protection of her morning capote.

“Well, then, if it was not an evil eye, it was an apathetic one," Lady Florence said almost panting; and with the prettiest aggrieved air possible, added, "do you know, Mr. Sinclair, I have been all my life such a spoilt child, so cherished, so petted, that indifference

now seems to me almost aversion, and that is not the most agreeable sentiment for one to inspire who has thoughts of kindness for all the world."

"Dear, dear Lady Florence," Julian anxiously interrupted, "you do me much wrong if you think I ever harboured one unkind feeling towards you. When you first arrived at Oakwood, my mind was painfully engrossed, my every feeling so jarred and out of tune, that, until you deigned so sweetly to interest yourself in my ungracious misanthropy, I could scarcely think of intruding mes ennuis in the gay crowd which usually surrounded you."

There was much of dissimulation in this assertion, and the wily Florence detected it as soon as uttered; but she dreamed not of resenting, or even of remarking it. She felt that the deception arose from the desire of ingratiating himself, or at least from the wish of glossing over to her his former neglect, and

this was something gained from the late impracticable Julian.

She was for some moments silent; at length turning her lovely countenance full upon her companion, she said archly, yet tenderly,

"I should have thought, Mr. Sinclair, those sunny eyes of yours might have seen more clearly, and have shown you that one sigh of your ennui, as you term your most Werterlike melancholy, would have been more pleasing to these poor ears, than all the nonsense to which they are usually condemned to listen. Mr. Sinclair," she continued more seriously, and with a pathos in her voice that vibrated sweetly on the heart of Julian, "you rather mistake me; and mistaking, do me injustice. I know that appearances are against me. I know that I am considered thoughtless and vain, but my heart is not so devoted to folly as you may believe. It is true there is a void in it, an aching craving void, which I have

been fain to fill up with vanity and dissipation; but, alas! it could not be so satisfied. It would have been happier for me, perhaps, had it really been as you suppose, and that this poor, poor heart had not discovered there were feelings and affections never before dreamed of in its philosophy. But it is now all too late; these feelings, these affections must be crushed, must be utterly destroyed."

She turned away her face as she ceased speaking, but not before Julian had met a glance of such passionate tenderness from her deep blue eyes, in which large tear-drops were standing, that a tremour passed over his whole frame, while his heart beat with a violence that for a few moments impeded his powers of utterance. At length, pressing with much fervour the trembling hand which still rested upon his arm, he said in low tones, but with an expression of greater feeling than he had yet evinced towards her,