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"Can you bear it? You will not like to play?"for the cards, recollecting the s of whist

with herlike old ti--"

No, for Mrs Curtis had grown up in a family where cards were

disapproved, and she felt it a sad fall in Fanny to be playing with all

the skill of her long training, and receiving grand compliments

from Lord Keith on joint victories over the two colonels It was a

distasteful gahtly hurt

at the colonel's defection, and Mr Touchett, with so in Lady Terew absent in a conversation that he was holding with young Mr Keith

upon--of all subjects in the world--lending library books, and finally

repaired to the piano, where Grace was playing herher mind from Fanny's enor Miss Curtis, but all the tiame Alick Keith, meanwhile, sat himself down

near Rachel and her mother, close to an open , for it was so warm

that even Mrs Curtis enjoyed the air; and perhaps because that watching

the colonel had made Rachel's discourses somewhat less ready than usual,

he actually obtained an interval in which to speak! He was going the

next day to Bishops Worthy, there to attend his cousin's wedding, and at

the end of a fortnight to bring his sister for her visit to Lady Tereat care, and it needed but little

leading to ood deal about her She had, it seemed, been

sent hoiment went

to India, and her brother who had been at school, then ith her for

a short tii her usual manner, "you have not been ten

years in the army!"

"I had my commission at sixteen," he answered

"You are not six-and-twenty!" she exclaiht as usual," was the reply, with his odd little sust"