Before he could answer, a venerable gentleman was at his side, to whom the young sportsman confessed that he was dying of hunger and had lost his way.  Mr. Noel, a patriarchal widower of vast wealth, was inhabiting this mansion in the sole company of his only daughter, the lovely being just referred to.  Mr. Buncle was immediately “stiffened by enchantment” at the beauty of Miss Harriot Noel, and could not be induced to leave when he had eaten his breakfast.  This difficulty was removed by the old gentleman asking him to stay to dinner, until the time of which meal Miss Noel should entertain him.  At about 10 A.M.  Mr. Buncle offers his hand to the astonished Miss Noel, who, with great propriety, bids him recollect that he is an entire stranger to her.  They then have a long conversation about the Chaldeans, and the “primaevity” of the Hebrew language, and the extraordinary longevity of the Antediluvians; at the close of which (circa 11.15 A.M.) Buncle proposes again.  “You force me to smile (the illustrious Miss Noel replied), and oblige me to call you an odd compound of a man,” and to distract his thoughts, she takes him round her famous grotto.  The conversation, all repeated at length, turns on conchology and on the philosophy of Epictetus until it is time for dinner, when Mr. Noel and young Buncle drink a bottle of old Alicant, and discuss the gallery of Verres and the poetry of Catullus.  Left alone at last, Buncle still does not go away, but at 5 P.M. proposes for the third time, “over a pot of tea.”  Miss Noel says that the conversation will have to take some other turn, or she must leave the room.  They therefore immediately “consider the miracle at Babel,” and the argument of Hutchinson on the Hebrew word Shephah, until, while Miss Noel is in the very act of explaining that “the Aramitish was the customary language of the line of Shem,” young Buncle (circa 7.30) “could not help snatching this beauty to my arms, and without thinking what I did, impressed on her balmy mouth half a dozen kisses.  This was wrong, and gave offence,” but then papa returning, the trio sat down peacefully to cribbage and a little music.  Of course Miss Noel is ultimately won, and this is a very fair specimen of the conduct of the book.

A fortnight before the marriage, however, “the small-pox steps in, and in seven days’ time reduced the finest human frame in the universe to the most hideous and offensive block,” and Miss Harriot Noel dies.  If this dismal occurrence is rather abruptly introduced, it is because Buncle has to be betrothed, in succession, to six other lively and delicious young females, all of them beautiful, all of them learned, and all of them earnestly convinced Unitarians.  If they did not rapidly die off, how could they be seven?  Buncle mourns the decease of each, and then hastily forms an equally violent attachment to another.  It must be admitted that he is a sad wife-waster.  Azora is one of the most delightful of these deciduous loves.  She