and winning smile they found had not in the least deserted her.  The feelings of a mother swelled warmly within her as she gazed on her child; her fond heart throbbed with chastened pride, as she marked the unfeigned and respectful admiration Caroline received, and these emotions, combined with the pleasure she felt at beholding again well-remembered faces, and hearing the glad tones of eager greeting, caused this evening to be equally as pleasurable to her, though in a different way, as it was to Caroline.

The attentions of Eugene St. Eval to Miss Hamilton continued as unintermitting as they were respectful the whole of that night; and Caroline, if she did not encourage, certainly forbade them not.  She listened to him with more attention; she appeared more animated with him than with any of her other partners, one perhaps, alone excepted, and yet she had taught her young heart to receive impressions to his prejudice, which Annie never permitted an opportunity to pass without carefully instilling.  Why did she then permit his attentions?  She knew not; while listening to his voice, there was a fascination about him she could not resist, but in her solitary hours she studiously banished his image to give place to one whom, by the representations of Annie, she persuaded herself that she loved alone.

Genuine, indeed, had been the enjoyment of Caroline Hamilton, from the first moment she had entered the ball-room; but if it could be heightened, it was when, about the middle of the evening, Lord Alphingham entered.  A party of gay young men instantly surrounded him, but breaking from them all, he attached himself the greater part of the night to Mr. Hamilton.  Only two quadrilles he danced with Caroline, but they were enough to aid the schemes of Annie.  She was at hand to excite, to an almost painful degree, the mind of her friend, to speak in rapturous praise of Lord Alphingham, to chain him now and then to her side, and yet so contrive, that the whole of his conversation was with Caroline; and yet the conduct of Annie Grahame had been such that night as rather to excite the admiration than the censure of Mr. Hamilton.  Playfully he combated the prejudice of his wife, who as sportively owned that Miss Grahame’s conduct in society was different to that she had anticipated; but her penetrative mind felt not the more at ease when she thought on the friendship that subsisted between Annie and her child.

“Am I dreaming, or is it Mrs. Hamilton I again behold?” exclaimed an elderly gentleman, as she came forward, and hastily advancing, seized both her hands, and pressed them with unfeigned warmth and pleasure, which greeting Mrs. Hamilton as cordially returned.  He was a very old friend of her father’s, and had attained by promotion his present high rank of Admiral of the Blue, but had been the first captain under whose orders her lamented brother sailed.  Very many, therefore, were the associations that filled her mind as she beheld him, and her mild eyes for a moment glistened in uncontrollable emotion.