“Harry,” said he, after his horse was put I up, “I am about to ask an interview with your sister.”

“I don’t think she will grant it,” replied her brother, “you are by no means a favorite; with her; however, you can try; perhaps she may.  You know the old adage, ‘varium et imutabile semper.’  Who knows but she may have changed her mind?”

“Is your uncle within?” asked Hycy.

“No,” replied his nephew, “he’s gone to Fethertonge’s upon some election business.”

“Could you not contrive,” said Hycy, “to leave her and me together, then, and allow me to ascertain what I am to expect?”

“Come in,” said Harry—­“never say it again.  If I can I will.”

Hycy, as we have stated before, had vast confidence in his own powers of persuasion; and general influence with women, and on this occasion, his really handsome features were made vulgar by a smirk of self-conceit which he could not conceal, owing to his natural vanity and a presentiment of success that is almost inseparable from persons of his class, who can scarcely look even upon the most positive and decided rejection by a woman as coming seriously from her heart.  Even Harry Clinton himself, though but a young man, thought, as he afterwards stated to his sister, that he never saw Hycy have so much the appearance of a puppy as upon that occasion.  As had been proposed, he withdrew, however, and the lover being left in the drawing-room with Miss Clinton began, with a simper that was rather coxcombical, to make allusions to the weather, but in such a way as if there was some deep but delightful meaning veiled under his commonplaces.  At length he came directly to the ’point.

“But passing from the weather, Miss Clinton, to a much more agreeable topic, permit me to ask if you have ever turned your thoughts upon matrimony?”

The hectic of a moment, as Sterne. says, accompanied by a look that slightly intimated displeasure, or something like it, was the only reply he received for a quarter of a minute, when she said, after the feeling probably had passed away—­“No, indeed, Mr. Burke, I have not.”

“Come, come, Miss Clinton,” said Hycy, with another smirk, “that won’t pass.  Is it not laid down by the philosophers that you think of little else from the time you are marriageable?”

“By what philosophers?”

“Why, let me see—­by the philosophers in general—­ha! ha! ha!”

“I was not aware of that,” she replied; “but even if they have so ruled it, I see no inference we can draw from that, except their ignorance of the subject.”

“It is so ruled, however,” said Hycy, “and philosophy is against you.”

“I am willing it should, Mr. Burke, provided we have truth with us.”

“Very good, indeed, Miss Clinton—­that was well said; but, seriously, have you ever thought of marriage?”

“Doesn’t philosophy say that we seldom think of anything else?” she replied, smiling.  Ask philosophy, then.”