“I see him,” said Henry, carelessly.

“Yes; but you don’t see every thing,” said Grace, slyly.

“Not all at once, like you ladies.  Bother my friend Applethwaite.  Well, if I must, I must.  Here goes—­from Paradise to Applethwaite.”

He went off, and both ladies smiled, and one blushed; and, to cover her blush, said, “it is not every son that has the grace to appreciate his mother so.”

Mrs. Little opened her eyes at first, and then made her nearest approach to a laugh, which was a very broad smile, displaying all her white teeth.  “That is a turn I was very far from expecting,” said she.

The ice was now broken, and, when Henry returned, he found them conversing so rapidly and so charmingly, that he could do little more than listen.

At last Mr. Carden came in from some other party, and carried his daughter off, and the bright evening came too soon to a close; but a great point had been gained:  Mrs. Little and Grace Carden were acquaintances now, and cordially disposed to be friends.

The next time these lovers met, matters did not go quite so smoothly.  It was a large party, and Mr. Coventry was there.  The lady of the house was a friend of his, and assigned Miss Carden to him.  He took her down to dinner, and Henry sat a long way off but on the opposite side of the table.

He was once more doomed to look on at the assiduities of his rival, and it spoiled his dinner for him.

But he was beginning to learn that these things must be in society; and his mother, on the other side of the table, shrugged her shoulders to him, and conveyed by that and a look that it was a thing to make light of.

In the evening the rivals came into contact.

Little, being now near her he loved, was in high spirits, and talked freely and agreeably.  He made quite a little circle round him; and as Grace was one of the party, and cast bright and approving eyes on him, it stimulated him still more, and he became quite brilliant.

Then Coventry, who was smarting with jealousy, set himself to cool all this down by a subtle cold sort of jocoseness, which, without being downright rude, operates on conversation of the higher kind like frost on expanding buds.  It had its effect, and Grace chafed secretly, but could not interfere.  It was done very cleverly.  Henry was bitterly annoyed; but his mother, who saw his rising ire in his eye, carried him off to see a flowering cactus in a hot-house that was accessible from the drawing-room.  When she had got him there, she soothed him and lectured him.  “You are not a match for that man in these petty acts of annoyance, to which a true gentleman and a noble rival would hardly descend, I think; at all events, a wise one would not; for, believe me, Mr. Coventry will gain nothing by this.”

“Isn’t driving us off the field something?  Oh, for the good old days when men settled these things in five minutes, like men; the girl to one, and the grave to t’other.”