‘Not distressed, you insensible boy?’

‘Very happy about Isabel,’ said he, turning to look at her with eyes dancing with merry mystification.

’A foolish girl not to like my Louis!  I thought better of her; but I suppose my Lady has taught her to aim higher!’

‘So she does,’ said Louis, earnestly.

’Ungrateful girl!  Why, Charlotte tells me you led her straight over the barricades, with cannon firing on you all the time!’

‘But not Cupid.’

’Then, it is true! and you have really hurt yourself!  And so pale!  My poor boy—­what is it?  I must nurse you.’

’I had so little blood left, that a gnat of tolerable appetite could have made an end of me on Sunday, without more ado.  But, instead of that, I had a good little Sister of Charity; and wasn’t that alone worth getting a bullet through one’s arm?’

Aunt Catharine was shuddering thankfully through the narration, when James came down, his brow unclouded, but his manner still agitated, as if a burthen had been taken away, and he hardly knew how to realize his freedom from the weight.

Mrs. Frost could not part with her boy, and Jane Beckett evidently had a spite against ‘they French bandages;’ so that Louis only talked of going home enough to get himself flattered and coaxed into remaining at No. 5, as their patient.

The two young men went in the afternoon to inquire after the Conway party, when they found that her ladyship was lying down, but Isabel, who had been summoned from a wholesale conflagration of all the MS. relating to the fantastic Viscount, brought down Miss King, apparently to converse for her; for she did little except blush, and seemed unable to look at either of the friends.

As they took leave, Louisa came into the room with a message that mamma hoped to see Mr. Frost Dynevor to-morrow, and trusted that he had made no engagements for the holidays.

James murmured something inaudible, and ran down stairs, snarling at Louis as he turned to the Miss Faithfulls’ door, and telling him he wanted to obtain a little more petting and commiseration.

‘I could not waste such an opportunity of looking interesting!’ said Louis, laughing, as he tapped at the door.

Delaford marshalled out the poor tutor with a sense of triumph.  ’His hopes, at least, were destroyed!’ thought the butler; and he proceeded to regale Marianne with the romance of the Barricades,—­how he had himself offered to be Miss Conway’s escort, but Lord Fitzjocelyn had declared that not a living soul but himself should be the young lady’s champion; and, seeing the young nobleman so bent on it, Mr. Delaford knew that the force of true affection was not to be stayed, no more than the current of the limpid stream, and had yielded the point; and, though, perhaps, his experience might have spared her the contaminating propinquity of the low rabble, yet, considering the circumstances, he did not regret