yours?" questioned Lawless in a tone of stern investigation.

"Yes, of course it is," began Coleman.

"Then write as I desire, sir," continued Lawless authoritatively; "I
ought to know my own feelings best, I imagine; I feel love-lorn, and
'love-lorn' it shall be."

"Oh! certainly," replied Coleman, slightly offended, "anything you
please, 'Your devotedly attached and lovelorn admirer'; here, sign it
yourself, 'George Lawless'."

"Bravo!" said Lawless, relapsing into his accustomed good humour
the moment the knotty point of the insertion of "love-lorn" had been
carried; "if that isn't first-rate, I'm a Dutchman; why, Freddy, boy,
where did you learn it? how does it all come into your head?"

"Native talent," replied Coleman, "combined with a strong and lively
appreciation of the sublime and beautiful, chiefly derived from my
maternal grandmother, whose name was Burke."

"That wasn't the Burke who wrote a book about it, was it?" asked
Lawless.

"Ah! no, not exactly," replied Coleman; "she would have been, I believe,
had she been a man."

"Very likely," returned Lawless, whose attention was absorbed in
folding, sealing and directing the important letter, "Miss Fairlegh".
"Now, if she does but regard my suit favourably."

"You'll be suited with a wife," punned Coleman.

"But suppose she should say 'No,'" continued Lawless, musing.

"Why, then, you'll be non-suited, that's all," returned the incorrigible
Freddy; and making a face at me, which (as I was to all appearance
immersed fathoms deep in ~368~~ Blackstone) he thought I should not
observe, he sauntered out of the room, humming the following scrap of
some elegant ditty, with which he had become acquainted:--

"'If ever I marry a wife,
I'll marry a publican's daughter,
I 'll sit all day long in the bar,
And drink nothing but brandy-and-water'".

Lawless having completed his arrangements to his satisfaction, hastened
to follow Coleman's example, nodding to me as he left the room, and
adding, "Good-bye, Fairlegh; read away, old boy, and when I see you
again, I hope I shall have some good news for you".

Good news for me! The news that my sister would be pledged to spend her
life as the companion, or, more properly speaking, the plaything, of a
man who had so little delicacy of mind, so little self-respect, as to
have allowed his feelings (for that he was attached to Fanny, as far as
he was capable of forming a real