"My mother makes me religious," said
Laurence, as she left the room; " she makes me
believe in devils."

He sat and brooded over all that she had
said, forced to admit that the inexorable laws of
expediency and worldly prudence were with her,
and that his wisest course would be to marry
Annie Sibson, and so stave off the Jews and the
auctioneers. True, she was disagreeable, ugly,
and ill-bred; while May Sefton ———- But then
the money—- that magic fifty thousand pounds
——while poor pretty May had only her wavy
chesnut-hair, and her large blue Irish eyes,
her frank smile and tender heart, her
simplicity, her grace, her lovingness and her,
beauty and a paltry fifty pounds a year;
scarcely enough to buy her gloves and bouquets!
If May Sefton could but have had Annie's
fortune, Laurence thought, the whole thing would
have been perfect, and two people might be
happy, instead of one a miserable sacrifice.
Not that Laurence had any reason to believe
that May loved him, more than she loved Fido,
her Skye-terrier, or Muff, her Persian cat. But
Laurence Grantley could not anticipate a
refusal from any woman; nor, indeed, need he have
feared one. Who could be found to refuse him,
young, handsome, of an old family, reputed
wealthy, acknowledged as the most agreeable
man of the county, perfectly well-bred, and
rather clever?

Half the county had gathered at the Assize
ball to do full honour to the wretches who had
been sentenced to be hanged, transported, or
imprisoned. But of all the guests, none made
a greater sensation than the Grantleys of the
Hall. They ranked among the first families
of the place; they were the largest landowners
—- what matter if every acre, even to the bare
crags about that desolate Black Tarn up on
the hill yonder, was mortgaged to its full
value? —- and were decidedly the leading people.
Mother and son headed every list, whether of
stewards or subscriptions; their doings
supplied the local papers with one or two
paragraphs weekly; they were foremost in everything,
political, parochial, scientific, or social;
nothing was considered complete that had not
the countenance of the family at the Hall. Then,
Mrs. Grantley was a local drawing-room queen,
or milliner's Juno, whose beauty and breeding
made society proud of her leadership. Neither
had the late Mr. Grantley been false to the family
traditions. A brave, kindly-hearted, open-handed,
energetic man, full of energy and manliness
flavoured with a certain full-bodied pomp, which
does not sit ill on men of six feet, hard riders, fast
livers, kind landlords, and generous neighbours—
his death had left a gap which even Laurence
himself had not filled up. But Laurence was doing
his best to prove worthy of his name, and was
now only slightly behind the place which his
father's memory yet held in public opinion.
Lavish, a little haughty and intensely proud,
but kind-hearted and social, what faults he
had did not show, and his virtues were
rendered all the brighter by the silver-gilt of the
setting. And he was not such a bad fellow
after all.

So, when the mother and son entered the room,
the whole assembly rose to greet them as if
they had been the chief magnates of the land,
and Grantley Hall the Windsor Castle of
England, instead of only Windsor Castle of the
county.

Mrs. Grantley was used to this kind of
homage; she accepted it as her due, gracefully if
not gratefully, with dignified condescension, not
with excitement or embarrassment. Do we not
all know women who simply suffer love and
permit admiration? To-night she was more than
ordinarily gracious. She threw into her greetings
such an impalpable kind of flattery, she
was so full of sympathy and thought for every
one, that she raised her popularity up to the
highest pinnacle, and brought the whole shire,
so to speak, on its knees at her feet. Laurence
was quite as popular. Perhaps, less so with the
men than with the women, who yet all combined
to praise Mrs. Grantley loudly, and to profess
the most unbounded admiration of her, from
her millinery to her morals. Her son was
only mentioned by them as an accident. But
this is a way women have, with the stately
mothers of well-looking sons, unmarried and
desirable.

The first dance had been gone through when
they entered, but some of the " best girls" were
sitting in a small knot apart, as was the custom.
To most of them the ball had not begun till
Mr. Laurence Grantley appeared. May Sefton,
the decided belle of the room, all in white and
water-lilies, was surrounded by half a dozen
aspirants, and smiled pleasantly and equally on
all: even sometimes favouring vith a kind of
human recognition that intense vulgarian, the
local lawyer, who, though of course not "in
their set," was yet slightly known to the Seftons,
as the local innkeeper might have been, or the
postmaster, or the exciseman, or any other
second-class individual permitted to exist. By her
side was Annie Sibson, the great heiress, in cold
blue, as cold as herself, under the chaperonage
of May's mother; the Lord-Lieutenant's handsome
daughter, in black and gold, was with them;
and the bishop's tall niece, in strong-coloured
pink helped out by hard trimmings,
winebottle colour. Laurence lounged up to the
group, bland and gracious, and was greeted
with a volley of smiles and bright glances such
as might have brought a dead man to life.
May's sweet face dimpled from brow to chin as
he bent down and spoke to her softly—- more
softly than to the others; and a pretty triumph
broke like sunshine from her eyes." He was
going to take her out the first, she thought;
and that was always a coveted distinction. But
after speaking with her for a few moments,
Laurence suddenly turned to Annie Sibson, and
asked her to waltz with him; asked her somewhat
abruptly, and not as he had spoken to
May; without looking at her, but keeping his
eyes raised just above the level of her head;
peculiarities of manner which Miss Annie did