’Regard, respect, esteem, admiration!—­Why, my dearest Colambre! this is saying all I want; satisfies me, and I am sure would satisfy Mrs Broadhurst and Miss Broadhurst too.’

’No doubt it will, ma’am; but not if I aspired to the honour of Miss Broadhurst’s hand, or professed myself her lover.’

’My dear, you are mistaken; Miss Broadhurst is too sensible a girl, a vast deal, to look for love, and a dying lover, and all that sort of stuff; I am persuaded—­indeed I have it from good, from the best authority—­that the young lady—­you know one must be delicate in these cases, where a young lady of such fortune, and no despicable family too is concerned; therefore I cannot speak quite plainly—­but I say I have it from the best authority, that you would be preferred to any other suitor, and, in short, that—­’

‘I beg your pardon, madam, for interrupting you,’ cried Lord Colambre, colouring a good deal; ’but you must excuse me if I say, that the only authority on which I could believe this is one from which I am morally certain I shall never hear it from Miss Broadhurst herself.’

’Lord, child! if you would only ask her the question, she would tell you it is truth, I daresay.’

‘But as I have no curiosity on the subject, ma’am—­’

’Lord bless me!  I thought everybody had curiosity.  But still, without curiosity, I am sure it would gratify you when you did hear it; and can’t you just put the simple question?’

‘Impossible!’

’Impossible!—­now that is so very provoking when the thing is all but done.  Well, take your own time; all I will ask of you then is, to let things go on as they are going—­smoothly and pleasantly; and I’ll not press you farther on the subject at present, Let things go on smoothly, that’s all I ask, and say nothing.’

’I wish I could oblige you, mother; but I cannot do this.  Since you tell me that the world and Miss Broadhurst’s friends have already misunderstood my intentions, it becomes necessary, in justice to the young lady and to myself, that I should make all further doubt impossible.  I shall, therefore, put an end to it at once, by leaving town to-morrow.’

Lady Clonbrony, breathless for a moment with surprise, exclaimed, ’Bless me! leave town to-morrow!  Just at the beginning of the season!  Impossible!—­I never saw such a precipitate, rash young man.  But stay only a few weeks, Colambre; the physicians advise Buxton for my rheumatism, and you shall take us to Buxton early in the season—­you cannot refuse me that.  Why, if Miss Broadhurst was a dragon, you could not be in a greater hurry to run away from her.  What are you afraid of?’

’Of doing what is wrong—­the only thing, I trust, of which I shall ever be afraid.’

Lady Clonbrony tried persuasion and argument—­such argument as she could use—­but all in vain—­Lord Colambre was firm in his resolution; at last, she came to tears; and her son, in much agitation, said—­