hich rose to his tongue.
'O, we should easily have arranged all that. So, sir, I craved a private
interview, and this morning was assigned; and I asked you to meet me
here, thinking, like a fool, that I should want your countenance as
bride's-man. Well, I state my pretension--they are not denied; the
promises so repeatedly made and the patent granted--they are
acknowledged. But I propose, as a natural consequence, to assume the rank
which the patent bestowed. I have the old story of the jealousy of
C----and M----trumped up against me. I resist this pretext, and offer to
procure their written acquiescence, in virtue of the date of my patent as
prior to their silly claims; I assure you I would have had such a consent
from them, if it had been at the point of the sword. And then out comes
the real truth; and he dares to tell me to my face that my patent must be
suppressed for the present, for fear of disgusting that rascally coward
and faineant (naming the rival chief of his own clan), who has no better
title to be a chieftain than I to be Emperor of China, and who is pleased
to shelter his dastardly reluctance to come out, agreeable to his promise
twenty times pledged, under a pretended jealousy of the Prince's
partiality to me. And, to leave this miserable driveller without a
pretence for his cowardice, the Prince asks it as a personal favour of
me, forsooth, not to press my just and reasonable request at this moment.
After this, put your faith in princes!'

'And did your audience end here?'

'End? O no! I was determined to leave him no pretence for his
ingratitude, and I therefore stated, with all the composure I could
muster,--for I promise you I trembled with passion,--the particular
reasons I had for wishing that his Royal Highness would impose upon me
any other mode of exhibiting my duty and devotion, as my views in life
made what at any other time would have been a mere trifle at this crisis
a severe sacrifice; and then I explained to him my full plan.'

'And what did the Prince answer?'

'Answer? why--it is well it is written, "Curse not the king, no, not in
thy thought!"--why, he answered that truly he was glad I had made him my
confidant, to prevent more grievous disappointment, for he could assure
me, upon the word of a prince, that Miss Bradwardine's affections were
engaged, and he was under a particular promise to favour them. "So, my
dear Fergus," said he, with his most gracious cast of smile, "as the
ma