ducements which light up the saloon, and cover the supper-table with spun-sugar temples;—she had no son, for whom an heiress was to be drawn from her "bright peculiar sphere" in the mazes of a mazurka—no daughters, making waltzes and window-seats so desirable; not so much as a niece, or even a disposable second cousin;—without one grain of esprit de société, or one atom of desire for its success;—the Morning Post might have eulogised for ever the stars that made her drawing-room "a perfect constellation of rank, beauty, and fashion,"—and before Mrs. Danvers had read one half of the paragraph, she would have forgotten the other. She had a good-natured husband, a large fortune, and a noble house in an unexceptionable street; and in giving parties, she only fulfilled the destiny attached to such possessions.
Their year was the most uniform of Time's quietest current. In February they came up to town, for three reasons: they had a family house, to which the family had come up for a century past,—and they were none of those new-light people who so disrespectfully differ from their grandfathers and grandmothers; secondly, all their neighbours came to town,—for their neigh-
