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 thing! I should pity her if she had to go through all the fuss that Lady Eskdale will make about Lady Sophia. We shall hear enough of it at Thornbank, though I shall keep out of the way; and Miss Forrester is welcome to take shelter there till the great storm blows over."

Mary hoped that Lord Beaufort's stay at home would not be long, as in her own mind she had decided on postponing her visit to Eskdale till his was concluded; and, in the meantime, she was glad to be in Helen's neighbourhood: so she and the Douglases took their departure together. Eliza was desperately low, and looked back at St. Mary's as at a lost heaven; and after the tall column on the top of the hill had disappeared, the remainder of the journey seemed to her to be through a dreary flat, and she could not understand what Miss Forrester meant by thinking the country pretty. However, she found some consolation in the idea of the endless talks she could have with Sarah, and in the unacknowledged expectation that Colonel Beaufort must come at last to see his relations. At all events, there were others of his name in the neighbourhood; she might hear them mention him: in short, black as were her prospects, there were still gleams of light, and, to end where she began, she should tell Sarah all about it.

Poor girl! little did she think that while she sat quietly in the carriage, pondering over Colonel Beaufort's tritest remarks, hoarding up as most important recollections that he liked reading the newspaper, and did not care about poetry; that he thought London the best place to live in; and that his watch cost ninety guineas: little did she know that the ungrateful creature had dismissed from his mind all the conversations that had ever passed between them, and was given up to discussions on foreign politics with Lord Teviot, and half disposed to go abroad himself for a few years; and that she was merely to him a