"Then you won't have meals, 'm, when folks is calling?" "Come, come, Anne-settle that another time. I am very hungry: we will take our chance of the next visitors," said Mr. Leslie. "Dear Henry, do you think she is vain, silly, and flaunting?" were the first words of Lady Bernard as they quitted the parsonage. "And you, Kate-do you think her a bustling homely housewife?" retorted Lord Bernard. "Come, we are matched, Henry, in our prognostications regarding Mrs. Leslie; we owe each other nothing. But, apart from the gratification I feel at her proving so very different to what we feared, did you ever see a fairer, more graceful creature?" my bosom. "Never!—though I say so to the wife of But what pleases me most is that with all her beauty and high breeding (for you can see, Kate, at a glance, that she has been brought up in the first society) she is so natural and simple; and that proceeds from no want of sense; for, on the contrary, her countenance beams with intelligence, and her remarks are replete with discrimination, as if she had really read and thought. She will be no fine lady, too delicate in mind and person to assist her husband. On my life! high as my opinion of Mr. Leslie was before, I think twice as well of him now I have seen his wife." "Her manners are most graceful-so refined; and what lovely hands she has!" "Ha! My dear wife, what two fine specimens we are of the weakness of the human mind. We ought to be thinking of Mr. Leslie and his sermon, so apostolic and faithful; and, instead, we are lost in admiration of the beauty and grace of his wife. On one subject, however, I have made up my mind: I shall take you from home shortly, for change of air and scene, and we will leave Mr. and Mrs. Leslie to themselves for a few months. Thus they will be left to make their own way, fight their own battles, without our assistance; and if they succeed in establishing themselves in the hearts of our people, their throne therein will be all the more secure that they have done it themselves, without help from us." "A wise plan, Henry. As for me, I shall leave home for the first time with a dawn of hope in my heart that we shall not return to find matters worse than when we left. But, before we go, Henry, we must ask the Leslies. to dinner, and introduce them, through the medium of one or two entertainments, to their neighbours. We may as well leave our people in the possession of the fact that we are disposed to love and respect our clergyman and his wife to the utmost extent-and we can do it, in this way, before we leave." "I respond to your idea, Kate, and think the softening powers of a quiet, consistent Christian - such as I am sure Mr. Leslie is-with the more bewitching, and so no less potent, influence that Mrs. Leslie may exercise over them, will be very good for the uncouth ways and somewhat rough manners of many of our good neighbours. Fix Thursday next for the first dinner-party, that Mrs. Robarts may have time to concoct a new dress for the occasion. "Ah! Henry, you are satirical.” "Nay, good wife, rather amiable in forethought. Mrs. Robarts has hitherto reigned supreme in beauty; now she must adorn her best, otherwise Our modest rector's wife will outshine her in white muslin." CHAPTER VII. "Every man in this age has not a soul Of crystal for all men to read their actions through; That they hold no intelligence." BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. MR. AND MRS. LESLIE had many visitors; and together they returned the courtesy, becoming acquainted with numbers of their parishioners, both rich and poor. Mrs. Robarts had naturally a kind heart, and could bear without envy or anger the knowledge that a younger, fairer rival was about to shine in what had hitherto been her own hemisphere. Perhaps if Mrs. Leslie had had four pretty, little, healthy, rosy |