“Yes, sir.”

“Tell her I’ll be with her immediately.”

His aunt, too, had been informed of the intended match between Sir Harry Benson and Miss Walton, Harley learnt.

“I have been thinking,” said she, “that they are distant relations, for the great-grandfather of this Sir Harry, who was knight of the shire in the reign of Charles I., married a daughter of the Walton family.”

Harley answered drily that it might be so, but that he never troubled himself about those matters.

“Indeed,” said she, “you are to blame, nephew, for not knowing a little more of them; but nowadays it is money, not birth, that makes people respected—­the more shame for the times.”

Left alone, Harley went out and sat down on a little seat in the garden.

“Miss Walton married!” said he.  “But what is that to me?  May she be happy!  Her virtues deserve it.  I had romantic dreams.  They are fled.”

That night the curate dined with him, though his visits, indeed, were more properly to the aunt than the nephew.  He had hardly said grace after dinner when he said he was very well informed that Sir Harry Benson was just going to be married to Miss Walton.  Harley spilt the wine he was carrying to his mouth; he had time, however, to recollect himself before the curate had finished the particulars of his intelligence, and, summing up all the heroism he was master of, filled a bumper, and drank to Miss Walton.

“With all my heart,” said the curate; “the bride that is to be!” Harley would have said “bride,” too, but it stuck in his throat, and his confusion was manifest.

VI.—­He Sees Miss Walton and is Happy

Miss Walton was not married to Sir Harry Benson, but Harley made no declaration of his own passion after that of the other had been unsuccessful.  The state of his health appears to have been such as to forbid any thoughts of that kind.  He had been seized with a very dangerous fever caught by attending old Edwards in one of an infectious kind.  From this he had recovered but imperfectly, and though he had no formed complaint, his health was manifestly on the decline.

It appears that some friend had at length pointed out to his aunt a cause from which this decline of health might be supposed to proceed, to wit, his hopeless love for Miss Walton—­for, according to the conceptions of the world, the love of a man of Harley’s modest fortune for the heiress of L4,000 a year is indeed desperate.

Be that as it may, I was sitting with him one morning when the door opened and his aunt appeared, leading in Miss Walton.  I could observe a transient glow upon his face as he rose from his seat.  She begged him to resume his seat, and placed herself on the sofa beside him.  I took my leave, and his aunt accompanied me to the door.  Harley was left with Miss Walton alone.  She inquired anxiously about his health.

“I believe,” said he, “from the accounts which my physicians unwillingly give me, that they have no great hopes of my recovery.”