that, despite of the disappointment one experienced and the other resented, both became absorbed and delighted with music and spectacle so enchanting. The more Helen was pleased, the more was she grieved that her sister did not share that pleasure; and her artless expressions on this subject, together with her observations on the performance, pleased Lord Meersbrook very much, and he began to think her actually prettier than either of her sisters, though the dazzling brilliancy of complexion possessed both by Louisa and Georgiana flung all others into the shade. The circumstance which pleased him the most in her, was the evidently repelling coldness with which she received a gentleman whom he had seen her dance with more than once on the evening of her mother's party, and who accosted her with the air of a man evidently well with himself, and presuming he was so with her.
This was Sir Harry Calthorpe, who had indeed paid her much attention at that time, and appeared studiously to avoid both her sisters, a circumstance that might arise either from delicacy or pique. She, however, well remembered what Louisa had said of him; and, although without any idea of attracting attention from Lord Meersbrook, and at the risk of offending her mother, she evidently shrunk from him with the feeling that might be supposed to influence the sensitive plant on the approach of an injurious touch. There was enough of the fashionable rouè in the look and man-
