thought so she was very slim, and her extreme fairness made her look almost pale, unless her cheek was more than usually tinged by exercise or excitement. Moreover, her dress, though not without a certain propriety and elegance, was simple, and, if we may use the word, unremarkable.

Mrs. de Snobyn's daughters, on the other hand, though elegant-looking girls, were rather inclined to embonpoint; their complexions were brilliant-their hair and eyes dark their dress rather showy.

Charlotte and Maude were as nearly as possible the same age; yet Maude certainly looked considerably the younger of the two.

"I must, indeed, cease to call you little Maude," said Charlotte, good-humouredly; "but I shall require a little practice before I can quite easily concede your new greatness to you.

"And I a good deal before I can as

sume my new dignity with ease. So I will go home and study dignity, for I see the Sociable at the door. Good morning, grandmamma. Good bye, dear Charlotte, and aunts and uncles, all."

And away she ran.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE removal of her family to a more aristocratic and fashionable situation had been proposed by Mrs. de Snobyn as soon as she was aware of her unexpected accession of fortune, and was effected as speedily as possible. She was not a woman to hesitate or falter in her plans and prospects, and when once she decided on a great move, she suffered no minor obstacles to check the game; with a definite object clearly in view, she was not to be

daunted by opposition nor disgusted by difficulty.

Hitherto her life had

been comparatively tame, but still, in all the demonstrations it had suited her to make, she had been eminently successful. We have seen how she achieved the hand of Mr. Snobbins, even before he himself had fully consented to the crisis; and how, almost within the honeymoon, she had contrived to change the whole current of his existence- subvert the settled habits of a life--and remove him from his homely, perhaps vulgar, but substantial and comfortable house, to a fashionable residence where he looked, and was little more than a cipher. From that hour she had been lady paramount in all things—but not painfully or too obviously so. She had the good taste to defer to him apparently, and he was not shrewd enough to find out that he was duped. A George the Second in humble life, was Mr. De Snobyn.

His sons were more clear-sighted, but

had the good sense not to attempt to enlighten their father, where the only probable result of such interference would be the interruption of that domestic harmony which at present Mr. De Snobyn did enjoy.

These sons were, however, in one point, though only in one, a decided thorn in the flesh to Mrs. De Snobyn; this was in their unchangeable resolution not to adopt the name of De Snobyn, instead of their legitimate one of Snobbins. There was a fund of plain practical good sense in both these young men, which was proof against all the blandishment and beguiling rhetoric of their stepmother.

3

So she wisely gave up the contest, though a woman of less presence of mind would often have felt awkwardly placed at the mal-apropos questions and remarks, which the different, yet somewhat similar names of father and son called forth. At first Mrs. De Snobyn made some attempt to pass it as a revived family name-one of some old