WYLDER'S HAJVD.
has always seemed a disgrace. But this apathetic beau-
ty had either more moral courage or more stupidity than
I, and was plainly terribly indifferent about the catastro-
phe. I've sometimes thought my struggles and sinkings
amused her cruel serenity.
I told her my early recollections of Brandon and Gy-
lingden, and how I remembered her a baby, and said some
graceful trifles on that theme, which I fancied were likely
to please. But they were only received, and led to noth-
ing. In a little while in comes Lord Chelford, always
natural and pleasant, and quite unconscious of his peerage
— he was above it, I think—and chatted away merrily
with that handsome animated blonde—who on earth,
. could she be ? — and did not seem the least chilled in the
stiff and frosted presence of his mother, but was genial and
playful even with that Spirit of the Frozen Ocean, who
received his affectionate trifling with a sort of smiling,
though wintry pride and complacency.
I thought I heard him call the young lady Miss Lake,
and there rose before me an image of an old General Lake,
and a dim recollection of some reverse of fortune. He was
— I was sure of that — connected with the Brandon fam-
ily; and was, with the usual fatality, a bit of a manvais
sujet. He had made away with his children's money or
squandered his own; or somehow or another impoverished
his family not creditably. So I glanced at her, and Miss
Erandon divined, it seemed, what was passing in my
mind, for she said: —
"That is my cousin, Miss Lake, and I think her very
beautiful — don't you?"
"Yes, she certainly is very handsome," and I was go-
ing to say something about her animation and spirit, but
remembered, just in time, that that line of eulogy would
hardly have involved a compliment to Miss Brandon. "I