AND — BROKEN BONES. 149 



The conversation was, however, summarily dis- 

 posed of, for Sir Henry came into the room booted 

 and spurred, but equipped in morning jacket as fresh 

 from his farming avocations, which were his hobby, 

 and, as every one very well knew, a pretty expensive 

 one too, and his hearty and somewhat prolix greet- 

 ings set aside every thing else for the moment, and in a 

 few minutes after the Duke of Beaufort, Sir Harry 

 Goodricke, Magher and Lord Alvanley were severally 

 announced, and then, ^' Breakfast is on the table, if 

 you please, ma'am," from the stately butler, ushered 

 the fair company to a handsome breakfast-room over- 

 looking the park from a pretty bay window, and to 

 that pleasantest, most cheerful and most degage of 

 meals, an English breakfast. 



Around the hospitable board a merry half-hour was 

 soon spent, but spent less merrily by Fairfax than any 

 other person, perhaps, of the party ; for just at the 

 moment when he was beginning to be sensible that she 

 was something much more than a charming girl, hun- 

 dreds of whom he had met already in all quarters of 

 the world, from the AVhite Sulphur Springs and Sara- 

 toga, to the Bains de Mont d' Or in Auvergne, to 

 Schlangenbad and Baden, to Almacks and the Fau- 

 bourg St. Germain, and something very nearly ap- 

 proaching to his ideal of a very woman, he felt that he 

 had by an idle word deeply wounded her in the ten- 

 derest point of a truly feminine nature, and he began 

 to feel that what he had done was irreparable, even if 

 he could subdue his pride into even a new advance. 



While he was thus torturing himself to no purpose, 

 and she was doing the honors of her table charmingly, 

 chatting playfully with the Duke, of whom she was an 

 especial pet, and keeping up the ball of conversation 

 ^with all the world and the rest of mankind,' seeing 

 all the while out of the corner of her eyes the discom- 

 posure of the Colonel, and beginning very shrewdly to 



