malicious smile; "I should rather say much too young to be trusted with so many girls—you will have them all in love with him."
"I trust," answered Lady Anne, with a quiet air of security, "that my girls have been too well brought up to think of such nonsense as falling in love."
"At all events," said her companion, and this time she sent the shaft to the mark, "they will have the credit of being so, and consider how very much such a report will be in the way of their settling. A dangler like Mr. Glentworth, who means nothing, keeps off those who would be more desirable."
Her ladyship soon afterwards took her leave, but not with her departed the doubts and fears she had left in Lady Anne's mind, and who should meet Lady Penrhyn on the stairs, but Mr. Glentworth. "Not for the world," exclaimed she, declining his offered escort to the carriage; "I will not keep you one moment from your nest of sucking doves. To which of them do you mean at last to throw the handkerchief?" and, humming the air of "Colin sait-il choiser," she left him without time to reply.
On entering the drawing-room, he found Lady Anne alone. Never very cordial in her manner, to-day it was even frozen. He inquired after the young ladies, and received the information that they were walking. Conversation here stopped from indifference on the part of Mr. Glentworth, and preoccupa-
