own fashion.  This he had done after the good old English plan, which is said to be somewhat loutish, but is not without its efficacy.  He had looked at her, and danced with her, and done the best with his gloves and his cravat, and had let her see by twenty unmistakable signs that in order to be perfectly happy he must be near her.  Her gloves, and her flowers, and her other little properties were sweeter to him than any scents, and were more valuable in his eyes than precious stones.  But he had never as yet actually asked her to love him.  But she was so quick a linguist that she had understood down to the last letter what all these tokens had meant.  Her cousin, Captain Scarborough, was to her magnificent, powerful, but terrible withal.  She had asked herself a thousand times whether it would be possible for her to love him and to become his wife.  She had never quite given even to herself an answer to this question till she had suddenly found herself enabled to do so by his over-confidence in asking her to confess that she loved him.  She had never acknowledged anything, even to herself, as to Harry Annesley.  She had never told herself that it would be possible that he should ask her any such question.  She had a wild, dreamy, fearful feeling that, although it would be possible to her to refuse her cousin, it would be impossible that she should marry any other while he should still be desirous of making her his wife.  And now Captain Scarborough had threatened Harry Annesley, not indeed by name, but still clearly enough.  Any dream of her own in that direction must be a vain dream.

As Harry Annesley is going to be what is generally called the hero of this story, it is necessary that something should be said of the particulars of his life and existence up to this period.  There will be found to be nothing very heroic about him.  He is a young man with more than a fair allowance of a young man’s folly;—­it may also be said of a young man’s weakness.  But I myself am inclined to think that there was but little of a young man’s selfishness, with nothing of falseness or dishonesty; and I am therefore tempted to tell his story.

He was the son of a clergyman, and the eldest of a large family of children.  But as he was the acknowledged heir to his mother’s brother, who was the squire of the parish of which his father was rector, it was not thought necessary that he should follow any profession.  This uncle was the Squire of Buston, and was, after all, not a rich man himself.  His whole property did not exceed two thousand a year, an income which fifty years since was supposed to be sufficient for the moderate wants of a moderate country gentleman; but though Buston be not very far removed from the centre of everything, being in Hertfordshire and not more than forty miles from London, Mr. Prosper lived so retired a life, and was so far removed from the ways of men, that he apparently did not know but that his heir was as completely entitled to lead an idle