and she was now fated to feel and lament it once more; for at the very moment of coming opposite to Union Passage, and within view of the two gentlemen who were proceeding through the crowds and treading the gutters of that interesting alley, they were prevented crossing by the approach of a gig, driven along on bad pavements by a most knowing-looking coachman, with all the vehemence that could most fitly endanger the lives of himself, his companion, and his horse.

“Oh, these odious gigs!” said Isabella, looking up, “how I detest them!” But this detestation, though so just, was of short duration, for she looked again, and exclaimed, “Delightful!  Mr. Morland and my brother!”

“Good Heaven! ’tis James!” was uttered at the same moment by Catherine; and on catching the young men’s eyes, the horse was immediately checked with a violence which almost threw him on his haunches; and the servant having now scampered up, the gentlemen jumped out, and the equipage was delivered to his care.

Catherine, by whom this meeting was wholly unexpected, received her brother with the liveliest pleasure; and he, being of a very amiable disposition, and sincerely attached to her, gave every proof on his side of equal satisfaction, which he could have leisure to do, while the bright eyes of Miss Thorpe were incessantly challenging his notice; and to her his devoirs were speedily paid, with a mixture of joy and embarrassment which might have informed Catherine, had she been more expert in the development of other people’s feelings, and less simply engrossed by her own, that her brother thought her friend quite as pretty as she could do herself.

John Thorpe, who in the mean time had been giving orders about the horse, soon joined them, and from him she directly received the amends which were her due; for while he slightly and carelessly touched the hand of Isabella, on her he bestowed a whole scrape and half a short bow.  He was a stout young man, of middling height, who, with a plain face and ungraceful form, seemed fearful of being too handsome unless he wore the dress of a groom, and too much like a gentleman unless he were easy where he ought to be civil, and impudent where he might be allowed to be easy.  He took out his watch:—­“How long do you think we have been running in from Tetbury, Miss Morland?”

“I do not know the distance.”  Her brother told her that it was twenty-three miles.

“Three-and-twenty!” cried Thorpe; “five-and-twenty if it is an inch.”  Morland remonstrated, pleaded the authority of road-books, innkeepers, and milestones:  but his friend disregarded them all; he had a surer test of distance.  “I know it must be five-and-twenty,” said he, “by the time we have been doing it.”  “It is now half after one; we drove out of the inn-yard at Tetbury as the town-clock struck eleven; and I defy any man in England to make my horse go less than ten miles an hour in harness; that makes it exactly twenty-five.”