“What do you think of her, mamma?” said Adriana, with glistening eyes, as she ran into Mrs. Neuchatel’s dressing-room for a moment before dinner.

“I think her manners are perfect,” replied Mrs. Neuchatel; “and as there can be no doubt, after all we have heard, of her principles, I think we are most fortunate. But what do you think of her, Adriana? For, after all, that is the main question.”

“I think she is divine,” said Adriana; “but I fear she has no heart.”

“And why? Surely it is early to decide on such a matter as that!”

“When I took her to her room,” said Adriana, “I suppose I was nervous; but I burst into tears, and threw my arms round her neck and embraced her, but she did not respond. She touched my forehead with her lips, and withdrew from my embrace.”

“She wished, perhaps, to teach you to control your emotions,” said Mrs. Neuchatel. “You have known her only an hour, and you could not have done more to your own mother.”

It had been arranged that there should be no visitors today; only a nephew and a foreign consul-general, just to break the formality of the meeting. Mr. Neuchatel placed Myra next to himself at the round table, and treated her with marked consideration—cordial but courteous, and easy, with a certain degree of deference. His wife, who piqued herself on her perception of character, threw her brown velvet eyes on her neighbour, Mr. Penruddock, and cross-examined him in mystical whispers. She soon recognised his love of nature; and this allowed her to dissert on the subject, at once sublime and inexhaustible, with copiousness worthy of the theme. When she found he was an entomologist, and that it was not so much mountains as insects which interested him, she shifted her ground, but treated it with equal felicity. Strange, but nature is never so powerful as in insect life. The white ant can destroy fleets and cities, and the locusts erase a province. And then, how beneficent they are! Man would find it difficult to rival their exploits: the bee, that gives us honey; the worm, that gives us silk; the cochineal, that supplies our manufactures with their most brilliant dye.

Mr. Penruddock did not seem to know much about manufactures, but always recommended his cottagers to keep bees.

“The lime-tree abounds in our village, and there is nothing the bees love more than its blossoms.”

This direct reference to his village led Mrs. Neuchatel to an inquiry as to the state of the poor about Hurstley, and she made the inquiry in a tone of commiseration.

“Oh! we do pretty well,” said Mr. Penruddock.

“But how can a family live on ten or twelve shillings a week?” murmured Mrs. Neuchatel.

“There it is,” said Mr. Penruddock. “A family has more than that. With a family the income proportionately increases.”

Mrs. Neuchatel sighed. “I must say,” she said, “I cannot help feeling there is something wrong in our present arrangements. When I sit down to dinner every day, with all these dishes, and remember that there are millions who never taste............