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284 was in the house, and earnestly desired to see her, she answered, "Bring Lord Rotheles here immediately; he very likely can tell me something about the election." Agreeable to her present humour, and consistent with her unfailing spirit of "keeping up appearances," she addressed the earl in a cheerful tone, welcoming him to town, and telling him she expected him to give away both her daughters. "Only to think, Rotheles," she added, "Helen, whom I have sighed over many a time, fearing, pretty as she is, that she would live to become an old maid, with blue lips, and a whitey brown complexion, living on her hundred a year in a northern village, playing tradrille with the doctor's lady and the vicar's widow; instead of which, this very girl marries the handsomest young nobleman about town!" Lord Rotheles made an effort to smile—to speak was utterly beyond his power. That the shadow before him was really the remnant of his sister, her voice and its subject convinced him, otherwise he might have exclaimed, "unreal mockery, hence," to the thing which hailed him "brother." Yet was there no deficiency in those observances, which