Whilst they were engaged in the other room, either looking at the flowers, or the paintings on the wall, or the various mineralogical specimens in a cabinet, Mrs. Hunter was discoursing to Flora about

Malvern.

"I hope, my dear, you will be prudent; don't get into mischief; don't let admiration turn your head; Mr. Boyle, I can see, is very anxious about you."

"About my mother, I should think you mean!" said Flora, opening her blue eyes," we do not go for my health."

No, no, my dear, I mean you. I hope you will take his advice, and attend to all that he says; he is a very prudent young man, but he will not stand nonsense I suspect. Are you not afraid of him?"

"Oh! he is very good-natured," replied Flora, carelessly.

Rather over precise, is he not?" said

Mrs. Hunter, in her sweetest voice.

"I am sure I do not know," was Miss Denys's unsatisfactory answer.

"I should suppose you must find him so, with your high spirits, so charming from being free and natural; from what passed between us just now, I should not expect you would suit at all. Some men cannot endure liveliness, and always grumble at it."

"Oh! but you do not know," said Flora very gravely," you have no idea what either of us are like, when we are alone together. People are never the same before company, and of course anything which they say to strangers, must not be taken au pied de la lettre."

"Oh, my dear, I did not expect to hear such things from you; surely you do not

uphold hypocrisy and insincerity," remonstrated Mrs. Hunter, quite shocked.

"Hypocrisy and insincerity! oh, dear no; we do not use such bad, hard words in good society, Mrs. Hunter. We call it politeness and knowledge of the world, tact and discernment, to suit our manners to our company; and so, of course, though you and I can be so easy and open to each other, you ought not to be surprised if I am quite different to other people."

"My dear Louisa," cried Mrs. Hunter, rising, and breaking in on the conversation in the other room, "we really must be going. We are preventing our dear Flora from going out."

Flora, who was too anxious to get rid of them to feel it did not signify, and too sincere to say so, saw them depart without any response to Miss Grant's affectionate anticipa

tions of future meetings, or any wish to see her again. She did not like the innocent way those great black eyes opened to look at Astley, and still less could she endure the drooping of the long eye-lashes, that Astley might gaze at them.

As soon as the carriage was gone, the soi-disant cousins set off arm-in-arm for the Park.

"That woman makes me sick," was Flora's observation, breaking a prolonged silence.

Astley demanded her meaning; to what antecedent did the demonstrative pronoun apply.

"To that Louisa Grant," said Flora, in a voice of comic indignation, "with her air of conscious beauty, as if she thought all the world would look at her face, and so she must resign herself to it. I hate women who droop their eyelids, and simper, and

move in that measured way, as if they were studying the effect of each gesture. And as to Mrs Hunter, she is a hypocrite. But I suppose you admired Miss Grant, Astley ?" "Yes, she is very handsome," said he, with provoking gravity.

"I thought you would like her," continued Flora, with a little malice, " that considerate tone, and thoughtful air, which show that each look, accent, and word was well weighed, that consciousness of the importance of each action she performs, are just what you have been trying to impress upon me for the last six years. Perhaps by the time I am as old as Miss Grant, I may be more like her. I mean to begin in earnest, now I have seen my pattern. Look," and her face assumed in a moment so absurd a caricature of Miss Grant's self-conscious expression, a look so much at variance with her own frank and