After the first flutter of conscious delight which his entrance had caused, she was able to talk to him cheerfully, and her spirits rose with the unwonted enjoyment.
It may be doubted whether Lord Norbourne was quite as much engrossed by his pamphlets as he appeared; for once or twice, as his daughter's laugh reached his ear, his stern features relaxed into a smile, which changed the whole expression of his face. More than once, too, he tried to catch Mrs. Courtenaye's eye; but she was too much absorbed in the book. Norbourne, it must be confessed, was impatient for the close of the evening: he had so much that he wished to tell his mother, and it struck him that she looked unusually pale and harassed. Still his cousin's claims, as a woman and his guest, were imperative; and, moreover, he felt for a young creature, shut out from so many ordinary sources of enjoyment, and whose life was so solitary. But never had she appeared so utterly uninteresting as now; for Ethel's sweet face shone before him, a sad contrast to the sickly and languid countenance
