Windermere, until they reached Pennersley Park, when he took his departure, and restored to Albert Grey his double responsibility. "The day has been too much for me," replied Alice Windermere to the inquiries of her lady mother, who remarked her daughter's weary look and silent mood, when she had rejoined the general party under the old oak tree. Lady Windermere felt secret delight at so excellent an excuse for removing one of her family from contact with the "other sort of people," who were assiduously employed in recruiting vigour and spirits with a profusion of refined and elegant matters of nutriment. "You must not remain here a moment longer-not a moment," said her ladyship tenderly; "I grieve that I cannot myself accompany you to the abbey, for I have given a solemn promise to dear Lord John Huron to occupy a seat in his britska, since he has undertaken to supply me on the road with delicious anecdotes, arising from this morning's adventures; and Lord John is inimitable in telling his clever things. Poppingham will accompany Miss Windermere." Old Lord Dumbledore, it happened, was vastly anxious to be away. He was impatient to confer with his head bailiff before he had quite forgotten the exact method of folding sheep upon the new plan of Farmer Peters, which he had employed the whole morning in studying. The agricultural baron, therefore, entreated permission to be allowed to offer his services and companionship to Miss Windermere, until the chariot should arrive at the cross road leading to Dumbleton Grange; an entreaty which Lady Windermere accorded with a gracious yet dignified countenance, but an inwardly delighted heart. "Take care of your dear self, Alice," said her ladyship, as soon as her daughter was seated in the chariot. "I shall feel dreadfully nervous and anxious until I see you again; and, perhaps, you had better take poor dear Emperor with you. He, too, does not seem to relish this mode of life. He is very much fatigued. To-day has, I fear, proved too much for him, also." The poodle joined Alice Windermere and Lord Dumbledore. The door of the chariot closed; and the lord, the lady, the abigail, and the Emperor, were soon whirling, lightningfast, upon the high road to Windersleigh Abbey. CHAPTER III. "Her favourite study was the mathematical; BYRON. Mrs. Auget was enamoured of science and philosophy. She made it a point of duty and of pleasure, when in Hertfordshire, to pa tronise, most sedulously, all lectures, on all subjects, delivered at the Philosophical Institution, at Sorbridge, the neighbouring town to Beech Grove, a town which must have been indeed ungrateful, had it not acknowledged the patronage and protection which Mrs. Auget extended to its race balls and assize balls, its Dorcas and Providence societies, its anti-climbing-boy association, and its union of mechanics, for acquiring languages upon the Hamiltonian and Jacototian systems. Mrs. Auget was a philosopher. She knew that the magnetic needle terminates in points of uncompromising hostility, in taste, principle, and action. She had studied and approved the theory which endows every primary action with a sphere of attraction, and a centre of repulsion. The aerial vortices, which originate and rule the winds, presided as her favourite subject of investigation in meteorology; indeed, it was the subject which, of all others, fascinated her, next to the discovery of the origin of ideas, and of the means of ascertaining the longitude. But Mrs. Auget's mind was rather of the analytic than the synthetic order. Her real talent lay rather in gathering insulated facts, than in correctly applying them; a talent which betrayed itself no less in her study than in the social parlour. It was no wonder, therefore, that, when talking over the pro-, ceedings of the previous day with her daughter, Emily, her son, Auget Smith Auget, and his friend and guest, Henry Molyneux, in the breakfast-room at the Haye, Mrs. Auget should have pronounced the gipsy party, at |