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254 few months he should meet them on the Continent. The next morning she had to see Mr. Delawarr as her guardian; some forms were necessary to go through; and accordingly to his residence she and Lady Mandeville drove—rather before their appointment. They had to wait a short period in the drawing-room. What a cold, uninhabited look now reigned through the magnificent apartments! There were no flowers—none of those ornamental trifles scattered round, which speak so much of pretty and feminine tastes—no graceful disorder—chairs, sofas, tables, all stood in their exact places. "I should never have thought," observed Lady Mandeville, "of missing Lady Alicia, unless I had come here." The hurried track of the multitude soon effaces all trace of death; but here the past seemed preserved in the present. All was splendid, but all was silent; and a thousand monuments had not so forcibly brought back the dead, as did the loneliness of her once crowded rooms. Neither sat down, and neither spoke, but walked about the apartment with soft and subdued steps, as if in the very presence of the dead, before whom the common