nder, is it,
now? She can do everything; knit, sew, sing, dance--and talk! She's never
uneasy for a word. She makes whole scenes of things go round you, like a
picture peep-show, I tell her. And always cheerful. She hasn't a minute
of grumps; and I'm sometimes a dish of stale milk fit only for pigs.

With your late hours here, I'm sure I want tickling in the morning, and
Chloe carols me one of her songs, and I say, "There's my bird!"'

Mr. Beamish added, 'And you will remember she has a heart.'

'I should think so!' said the duchess.

'A heart, madam!'

'Why, what else?'

Nothing other, the beau, by his aspect, was constrained to admit.

He appeared puzzled by this daughter of nature in a coronet; and more on
her remarking, 'You know about her heart, Mr. Beamish.'

He acquiesced, for of course he knew of her life-long devotion to
Caseldy; but there was archness in her tone. However, he did not expect a
woman of her education to have the tone perfectly concordant with the
circumstances. Speaking tentatively of Caseldy's handsome face and
figure, he was pleased to hear the duchess say, 'So I tell Chloe.'

'Well,' said he, 'we must consider them united; they are one.'

Duchess Susan replied, 'That's what I tell him; she will do anything you
wish.'

He repeated these words with an interjection, and decided in his mind
that they were merely silly. She was a real shepherdess by birth and
nature, requiring a strong guard over her attractions on account of her
simplicity; such was his reading of the problem; he had conceived it at
the first sight of her, and always recurred to it under the influence of
her artless eyes, though his theories upon men and women were astute, and
that cavalier perceived by long-sighted Chloe at Duchess Susan's coach
window perturbed him at whiles. Habitually to be anticipating the
simpleton in a particular person is the sure way of being sometimes the
dupe, as he would not have been the last to warn a neophyte; but abstract
wisdom is in need of an unappeased suspicion of much keenness of edge, if
we would have it alive to cope with artless eyes and our prepossessed
fancy of their artlessness.

'You talk of Chloe to him?' he said.

She answered. 'Yes, that I do. And he does love her! I like to hear him.
He is one of the gentlemen who don't make me feel timid with them.'

She received a short lecture on the virtues of timidity in preserving the
sex from danger; after which, considering