There is no great toilette kept at Osbaldistone Hall, you must know; but I must take off these things, they are so unpleasantly warm,--and the hat hurts my forehead, too," continued the lively girl, taking it off, and shaking down a profusion of sable ringlets, which, half laughing, half blushing, she separated with her white slender fingers, in order to clear them away from her beautiful face and piercing hazel eyes.

If there was any coquetry in the action, it was well disguised by the careless indifference of her manner.

I could not help saying, "that, judging of the family from what I saw, I should suppose the toilette a very unnecessary care." "That's very politely said--though, perhaps, I ought not to understand in what sense it was meant," replied Miss Vernon; "but you will see a better apology for a little negligence when you meet the Orsons you are to live amongst, whose forms no toilette could improve.

But, as I said before, the old dinner-bell will clang, or rather clank, in a few minutes--it cracked of its own accord on the day of the landing of King Willie, and my uncle, respecting its prophetic talent, would never permit it to be mended.

So do you hold my palfrey, like a duteous knight, until I send some more humble squire to relieve you of the charge." She threw me the rein as if we had been acquainted from our childhood, jumped from her saddle, tripped across the courtyard, and entered at a side-door, leaving me in admiration of her beauty, and astonished with the over-frankness of her manners, which seemed the more extraordinary at a time when the dictates of politeness, flowing from the court of the Grand Monarque Louis XIV., prescribed to the fair sex an unusual severity of decorum.