long
run," said the baronet. This was the manner in which they tried to
be merry that evening after dinner at Wharton Hall. The two girls
sat listening to their seniors in contented silence,--listening
or perhaps thinking of their own peculiar troubles, while Arthur
Fletcher held some book in his hand which he strove to read with all
his might.

There was not one there in the room who did not know that it was the
wish of the united families that Arthur Fletcher should marry Emily
Wharton, and also that Emily had refused him. To Arthur of course the
feeling that it was so could not but be an additional vexation; but
the knowledge had grown up and had become common in the two families
without any power on his part to prevent so disagreeable a condition
of affairs. There was not one in that room, unless it was Mary
Wharton, who was not more or less angry with Emily, thinking her
to be perverse and unreasonable. Even to Mary her cousin's strange
obstinacy was matter of surprise and sorrow,--for to her Arthur
Fletcher was one of those demigods, who should never be refused, who
are not expected to do more than express a wish and be accepted. Her
own heart had not strayed that way because she thought but little of
herself, knowing herself to be portionless, and believing from long
thought on the subject that it was not her destiny to be the wife of
any man. She regarded Arthur Fletcher as being of all men the most
lovable,--though, knowing her own condition, she did not dream of
loving him. It did not become her to be angry with another girl on
such a cause;--but she was amazed that Arthur Fletcher should sigh in
vain.

The girl's folly and perverseness on this head were known to them
all,--but as yet her greater folly and worse perverseness, her
vitiated taste and dreadful partiality for the Portuguese adventurer,
were known but to the two old men and to poor Arthur himself. When
that sternly magnificent old lady, Mrs. Fletcher,--whose ancestors
had been Welsh kings in the time of the Romans,--when she should hear
this story, the roof of the old hall would hardly be able to hold her
wrath and her dismay! The old kings had died away, but the Fletchers,
and the Vaughans,--of whom she had been one,--and the Whartons
remained, a peculiar people in an age that was then surrendering
itself to quick perdition, and with peculiar duties. Among these
duties, the chiefest of them incumbent on females was that of so
restraining their