found she was safe,)" In short, my dear Sir, though I should grieve to see less of you in a house which you are pleased to say is agreeable to your taste, and much as I should shudder to compromise my daughter's delicacy, yet I am sure you will allow for a parent's anxiety, and not expose me when I say, that it perhaps would be best for the happiness of both parties, if you saw less of Miss Neville than do;-of hers, for the reasons I have with such unaccountable boldness ventured to mention; of yours, in order to spare a man of honour the pain of thinking he had even unintentionally made an inno cent young person unhappy.”

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Then protesting she was surprised at her own courage in going so far, and that he was the only man alive with whom she could be thus explicit, she would break up the conference; and if, upon his attempting to make explanations, she found they were not likely to be as precise as she wished, she would say with a laughing air of generosity, " Nay, I interdict all sudden resolutions;-with your notions, it cannot be my confidence has been drawn from me solely by a sense of your honour, and I must myself take care that to that honour no improper sacrifice on your part is offered."

It required all, and more than all Tremaine's experience in the world, to be indifferent to a mother and daughter who thought so favourably of him. He

did not exactly say with Benedick, "Love me! why it must be requited," and " the world must be peopled;" but he began to take himself seriously to task. "If," said he, "this good mother, confiding in my honour, commits her delicacy so far, shall I not do wrong if I continue these visits? On the other hand, is not marriage the natural and honourable state of man? Ought I to retire without ascertaining whether I may not myself love?" To this, however, he added another very important question, whether he had not, all his life, been disappointed whenever he came to this point of self-examination?

In truth, the old fault so often mentioned, the natural fastidiousness, not to say waywardness of Tremaine, having been his enemy through life in lighter things, could not fail to influence his fate on this most important part of a man's conduct. With a heart originally warm, liberal, and tender too, his disposition towards marriage was not merely natural, but a principle. Yet he had reached an age not far off forty, without even an engagement. A close self-examination, therefore, in regard to Miss Neville, became absolutely necessary to this man of honour as well as of refinement; and the result was, that he resolved not to discontinue his visits, but strictly to scrutinize her conduct, and his own heart.

All this while, the poor girl was totally unconscious of what was passing; and though her mother

had acquainted her how struck Tremaine had been with her grace and retenue at court, she could not make out why, according to mamma's directions, the moment he appeared, all her spirits, of which she had a great exuberance, were to be repressed, and why at eighteen she was to assume the manners of a woman of thirty.

This could not long be concealed, and Tremaine began to shudder, when dancing with her at a very select ball, she not only gave the Highland fling with something very like violence, but actually turned both himself and others in the dance, two or three times oftener than the dance required.

The very little inclination of Tremaine, not even amounting to penchant, and excited solely by the appeal made by the mother to his feelings, began to give way. It is impossible, said he to himself, that this girl can prefer a man twenty years beyond her in age; there must be some mistake. In this frame of mind, calling suddenly at Neville House when mamma was out, he found her at high romps with her sister and a cousin, a young Cantab, little more than her own age.

The dreadful sounds of " Tom, be quiet," alarmed him on the stairs, and his fear was completed when entering the drawing room, he found his Sophonisba heated with play, holding up the fragments of Tom's cravat in noisy triumph, while her own dress ex

hibited indubitable signs that the familiarity of cousins had gone as far as it legitimately might.

The consequence was, that though too just to accuse a young person of the faults of her mother he viewed the mother herself with interminable disgust; and seeing at once the reality of her character, all intimacy ceased.

CHAP. IX.

FEMALE REFINEMENT.

"Octavia is of a cold and still conversation."
"She shews a body rather than a life."

SHAKSPEARE.

AND now for the fair Gertrude! Was that surmise of the Carysfort also founded?-Strange to say, more so than at first sight appeared. For though no two creatures were less alike than Lady Bellenden and Mrs. Neville, or than the fair beings whom they owned as daughters, the attention of Mr. Tremaine had been excited by the dignified Exclusive, in at least as great a degree as by the playful Neville.

Lest the reader however should imagine that Mr. Tremaine was a mere man of whim, and endowed

with neither penetration nor consistency, let us apprise him, as we ought, that he was honest, and true to his tastes. He had no objection to, or perhaps, he even required, a liveliness of character to charm him; but he required still more à fond; a dignity, and even gravity of character, in all things where principle or feeling was concerned. If his interest about Miss Neville (whatever it was) seem to contradict this, let it be recollected that she had been misrepresented to him, and that he soon discovered his mistake: whereas the Lady Gertrude awed the sense in all the pride and power of a retired and lofty manner, which, even if not all her own, seemed to be so naturally inherited from her aunt, (who was the very queen of correctness as well as fashion,) that the sceptre of the duchess, by the easiest of all transitions appeared to devolve as of course, upon the imitative niece. When Tremaine therefore first saw her, he was inclined to approve, because all he lived with and most respected approved also. He however knew nothing of her real character, and he was checked at first, fully as much by his feeling in regard to their disparity of years, as his uncertainty of the feeling of the family on their disparity of rank.

The latter fear was soon set at rest; for independent of the plain character of Lord Bellenden, and the high antiquity of his own family,—in which there had been titles long before Lord Bellenden's was