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that between woman and woman, when both are young, beautiful, and innocent!-had few opportunities for enjoying intercourse. Colonel Grey, shut up in monklike retirement, saw but little society at the Retreat; and made a rule of uniformly declining the hospitalities of the neighbouring gentry: an unbroken seclusion, which obtained for him more favour in the eyes of Lady Windermere than would have been accorded to the highest excellence and the most sterling worth. The gracious tolerance, however, yielded to Colonel Grey, on account of his recluse life and withdrawal from society, by no means extended to his daughter, Miss Grey; for Constance saw the world glad and smiling in her presence, and, having as yet found no fault in the world to aggrieve her, shrank not from mingling freely in its happy circles.

Windersleigh Abbey, the old hereditary pile which had seen generation after generation of the family of Windermere spring into being, flourish, and pass away, within its escutcheoned walls, lay at too great a distance from the Retreat, the unostentatious residence of Colonel

Grey, to admit of frequent meeting between Miss Windermere and Constance. Occasionally, Constance found herself, for a few days, a guest at the Abbey, exploring, with Alice Windermere, the mysterious recesses of the ancient building; studying the family portraits that clothed the walls; and learning, from the antiquarian lore of her friend, the legends which told of the loveliness of an ancestress whose stiff ruff and stony eyes, on the canvass before her, cast a fabulous air upon the narration; or of courteous and gallant knights, of chivalric fame, but of singularly grim countenances.

These visits were, however, rare; and, had Constance Grey suspected that any feeling, in another member of the baronet's family, was at variance with the lively joy of Alice Windermere, whenever she gave the invitation, the visits would have been even less frequent; but Constance thought not of suspicions.

The gipsying party about to take place, to the infinite distress of Lady Windermere, had been proposed by Constance Grey, during her last stay at the Abbey. Her friend had seized upon the proposal with pleasure; had adopted

it; and Lady Windermere had, at the moment, refrained from opposing it, considering that the show of any difference in opinion between Alice and her ladyship, before such a visitor as Miss Grey, would be, in a degree, unbecoming, because undignified.

The season that of early autumn, when, in very joyousness, the luxuriant and ripe verdure assumes a kind of fantastic sobriety—the abandon of such a party, roaming unrestrainedly through the romantic woods of Pennersley; and, to crown the whole, the rusticity of a déjeûner under the old oak-tree in the park, had thrown over the projected excursion a charm that justified impatience for its arrival, at least in the opinion of Alice Windermere and her friend, Constance Grey.

"I must not forget my badge. Constance will scarcely recognise me without my bouquet," said Miss Windermere, hastening from the boudoir to the conservatory, as the emblazoned chariot of Lady Windermere drove up the beech avenue to the fretted portico of the old abbey.

The unvaried sprig of small myrtle, and the

cluster of favourite scarlet pelargonium, dear from a thousand associations, were quickly gathered and joined in harmony.

"You are too sentimental, Miss Windermere," observed her ladyship, in her usual monotonous voice. "Much too sentimental," repeated the lady, fondling and kissing the fat poodle in her lap, as the chariot rolled away from the abbey to the general rendezvous in Pennersley Combe.

CHAPTER II.

Say that

you love me not; but say not so

In bitterness.

The common executioner,

Whose heart the accustomed sight of death makes hard,
Falls not the axe upon the humbled neck,

But first asks pardon."

SHAKESPEARE.

THE "alta impresa" of the gipsy party succeeded as well as such undertakings generally succeed. Much roving after uncertain enjoyment-much toiling through grass fields for rural pleasures—much scrambling to the detriment of dress-much fatigue when all was over-might be fairly taken as the sum total of the delights.

The young ladies severally expressed themselves incapable of comprehending the extent of apathy to which their more sedate manners could arrive; and on sundry occasions were perfectly amazed at the preference shewn by

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