referring to the lateness of the hour: "I want to see
him, and tell him of my happiness; I made him almost as miserable as
myself this morning; he must be at the Hall, I suppose, but I'm sure
your servant told me he was at home."

"She only spoke the truth if she did," said I, entering the drawing-room
as coolly as if nothing unusual had occurred.

Fanny started up with a slight shriek, and then, glancing at me with a
countenance in which smiles and tears were strangely commingled, ran out
of the room to hide her confusion, while Harry Oaklands--well, I hardly
know what Harry did, but I have some vague idea that he hugged me, for I
recollect feeling a degree of oppression on my breath, and an unpleasant
sensation in my arms, for the next five minutes.

"So you have heard it all, you villain--have you?" he exclaimed, as soon
as his first transports had a little subsided. "O Frank! my dear old
fellow, I am so happy! But what a blind idiot I have been!"

"All's well that ends well," replied I, shaking him warmly by the hand;
"they say lookers-on see most of the game, but in this case I was as
blind as you were; it never for a moment occurred to me that Fanny cared
for you otherwise than as a sister. Indeed, I have ~380~~ sometimes been
annoyed that she did not, as I considered, properly appreciate you; but
I understand it all now, and am only too glad that her pale looks and
low spirits can be so satisfactorily accounted for."

"Frank," observed Oaklands gravely, "there is only one thing which
casts the slightest shade over my happiness; how are we to break this
to Lawless? I can afford to pity him now, poor fellow I I know by my own
feelings the pang that hearing of a rival's success will cost him."

"I don't think his feelings are quite as deep and intense as yours,
Harry," replied I, smiling involuntarily at my reminiscences of the
morning; "but I am afraid he will be terribly cut up about it; he was
most unfortunately sanguine: I suppose I had better break it to him."

"Yes, and as soon as possible too," said Oaklands, "for I'm sure my
manner will betray my happiness. I am the worst hand in the world at
dissimulation. Walk back with me and tell him, and then stay and dine
with us."

"Agreed," replied I; "only let me say half a dozen words to my mother;
"and, rushing upstairs, I dashed into her room, told her the whole
matter on the spot, incoherently, and without the slightest preparation,
whereby I set her cry