“You are trifling with me, Mrs. Martindale.”

“Seriously, then, Mary, I was very much pleased to notice the attentions shown you by Mr. Fenwick, and more pleased at seeing how much those attentions appeared to gratify you.  He is a young man in a thousand.”

“I am sure I saw nothing very particular in his attentions to me; and I am very certain that I was also more gratified at the attentions shown by him, than I was by those of other young men present.”

“Of course not.”

“You seem to doubt my word?”

“Oh no—­I don’t doubt your word.  But on these subjects young ladies feel themselves privileged to—­to”——­

“To what, Mrs. Martindale?”

“Nothing—­only.  But don’t you think Mr. Fenwick a charming young man?”

“I didn’t perceive any thing very remarkable about him.”

“He did about you.  I saw that, clearly.”

“How can you talk so to me, Mrs. Martindale?”

“Oh la!  Do hear the girl!  Did you never have a beau, Mary?”

“Yes, many a one.  What of it?”

“And a lover too?”

“I know nothing about lovers.”

As Mary Lester said this, her heart made a fluttering bound, and an emotion, new and strange, but sweet, swelled and trembled in her bosom.

“But you soon will, Mary, or I’m mistaken.”

Mrs. Martindale saw the cheek of the fair girl kindle, and her eye brighten, and she said to herself, with an inward smile of satisfaction—­

“I’ll make a match of it yet—­see if I don’t!  What a beautiful couple they will be!”

Mrs. Martindale was one of that singular class of elderly ladies whose chief delight consists in match-making.  Many and many a couple had she brought together in her time, and she lived in the pleasing hope of seeing many more united.  It was a remarkable fact, however, that in nearly every instance where her kind offices had been interposed, the result had not been the very happiest in the world.  This fact, however, never seemed to strike her.  The one great end of her life was to get people together—­to pair them off.  Whether they jogged on harmoniously together, or pulled separate ways, was no concern of hers.  Her business was to make the matches.  As to living in harmony, or the opposite, that concerned the couples themselves, and to that they must look themselves.  It was enough for her to make the matches, without being obliged to accord the dispositions.

As in every thing else, practice makes perfect, so in this occupation, practice gave to Mrs. Martindale great skill in discerning character—­at least, of such character as she could operate on.  And she could, moreover, tell the progressive states of mind of those upon whom she exercised her kind offices, almost as truly as if she heard them expressed in words.  It was, therefore, clear to her, after her first essay, that Mary Lester’s affections might very easily be brought out and made to linger about the young man whom she had, in her wisdom, chosen as her husband.  As Mary was a very sweet girl, and, moreover, had a father well to do in the world, she had no fears about interesting Mr. Fenwick in her favour.