and so unheroic. He felt himself scarcely
worthy of Jane Melville, and he would never compare himself with the
Laird of Mosstower. But the young people had been thrown together, and
had spent much of their time of meeting in the open air. William
Dalzell was a good rider and a fearless sportsman; he rode a beautiful
horse, and was very careful of it. He appeared to have a good temper,
and his mother worshipped him, while Elsie was never weary of sounding
his praises. Mr. Hogarth was in indifferent health, and was somewhat
exacting at all times. He had not the sympathy with the high spirits of
youth that he had had in former years, so that Jane had enjoyed the
animated rides, where she did most of the talking to a listener, young,
handsome, and determined to be pleased with everything she said and
did. She thought she interested him in her favourite subjects; he had
said that she improved him, and his mother said the same; so that she
rejoined in her influence, which seemed to bear such good results.

Miss Rennie, who had heard when in ----shire, a somewhat exaggerated
account of young Dalzell's attachment to Miss Melville, was very much
disgusted with his conduct, and though his attentions to Laura Wilson
amused her very much, she had a grudge at him for their mercenary
motives. Laura was evidently captivated at first sight; she could speak
of nobody but Mr. Dalzell, and Mr. Rennie as her guardian was a little
alarmed, but on inquiry he found that Moss Tower was not very deeply
dipped after all; Mrs. Dalzell had her jointure off it, but he was an
only son, and any little wildness or extravagance of youth was likely
to be put an end to by marriage. Laura was a somewhat troublesome ward,
so passionate and so self-willed that even at school she had carried
her point against him by sheer determination over and over again, and
he wished heartily to be well freed of her by marriage with a tolerably
respectable man. Her fortune he would secure her future husband from
making ducks and drakes of by settlements, which are generally in
Britain framed as if the future husband was an enemy to be dreaded, and
not a friend to be trusted. For the law as it stands puts such enormous
power, not only over happiness (which is inevitable), but over property
and liberty, into the hands of the husband, to be used against as well
as for the advantage of the wife, that it is only by taking power from
both, and vesting it in trustees, that money