"Yes, I am very fond of riding; but we have scarcely returned a week, and I have had a bad cold."
"Perhaps you draw?" asked Wilton, approaching his object from afar.
"No; I have always preferred music. None of us care for drawing, except my youngest sister."
"Indeed!" (looking across the table), "that is a pleasant variety from the crochet, croquet, and curates."
"No; not Gertrude—I mean Isabel. She is still in the school-room."
"Ah! And I suppose sketches with her governess?"
"Yes."
"As I imagined," thought Wilton, "my pretty companion is the governess. Perhaps she will be in the drawing-room when we go there. If so, I must lay the train for some future meeting."
"Pray, Colonel Wilton, are you any relation to a Mr. St. George Wilton we met at Baden last summer? He was, or is, attaché somewhere."
"He has the honor of being my first cousin once removed, or my third cousin twice removed—some relation, at all events. I am not at all well up in the ramifications of the family."