"Lady Charlotte?"-said Mr. Willoughby with quickness.

The lucid fairness of Isabella's com plexion became instantly suffused with the colour of the rose."

"I thought of mamma," said sheand they were both silent for a minute. "You could not have a better,"said Mr. Willoughby, recovering himself- and when shall this great gala be? now you have named it, I feel quite an inclination for the thing."

Isabella had lost hers; but she could not now draw back, and the mighty when was soon settled- but if to fix the when did not require much consultation, this was by no means the case with the how.

Mrs. Nesbit was no sooner acquainted that the bill had received the assent of the sovereign, than the whole of her little soul was in a bustle; her brain became a chaos of contrivances,

there was not a room or a closet in Mr. Willoughby's house that did not, in her imagination, undergo an entire change; partitions were removed and erected; boudoirs were transformed into temples; and dressing rooms into conservatories, while columns and arches arose on every hand with a facility that would have done honour to Aladdin's lamp. Every angle was to her mind's eye shaded with the most beautiful drapery; every recess hung with the most magnificent canopies : there were also to be so many ingenious surprises: so many witty secrets, which were to come to light so a propos! that Isabella was alike bewildered by such a labyrinth of metamorphoses, and sickened by so much deception. Nor was she much relieved by the more solemn and profound erudition with which the matter was treated by Lady Jane, to whom she had

recourse a little to stem the tide of Mrs. Nesbitt's destructive, or as she called them, creative powers. Lady Jane, as much a pedant in the arranging an entertainment as in educating a daughter, overlooked the solid foundation of "simplicity" in the one, as she did of "religious obligation" in the other, and gave all her attention to details that could have no value but in the eyes of the upholsterer, or the passing moral of the day. The shade of a drapery, or the affixing of a chandelier, cost her as much consideration, and brought forth as deep a train of reasoning, as might have been sufficient to have settled the various interests at the Congress of Vienna. The Misses Hastings also added to the perplexity of poor Isabella; they had each their favourite plan, which, however, varied with every successive hour, and the continual intreaty of "Do,

dear Isabella, let it be so," —“ Now pray, Isabella, indulge me," — and the violent condemnation, or praise of their several fancies, -"Oh, that would be hideous, shocking!"-"Oh, that would be delightful, delicious, exquisite ! "— "quite new!"-" common place!" et cetera, et cetera, so exhausted the spirits and so puzzled Isabella's desire to oblige each, that she knew not what to decide; and acknowledging that she had no talents for the decoratious of a ball, she would most willingly have resigned the whole management into the hands of Lady Jane and Mrs. Nesbitt, had not the latter continually reminded her, that it was not only “the giving a ball,” in which she was engaged, but a trial of skill with her rival; and that it would not avail how "nouvelle," or "unique," the entertainment was, if Mr. Willoughby were

not made sensible that it was the offspring of her genius.

Under this spur, Isabella laboured on to accomplish that which her real good taste and good sense told her could be of no use whatever to the interests of her heart. Experience confirmed the dictates of these two infallible guides; for she soon found, that although Mr. Willoughby bore with unwearied good temper the eternal discussions, the accumulated notes and callings that this business produced from Mrs. Nesbitt and Lady Jane; and that he even seemed to have pleasure in all from which she appeared to derive any, yet that in fact he took no more interest in the details in which she was hourly engaged, than he would have done if they had regarded the furnishing of a baby-house. He smiled upon the importance that seemed to be attached