listener; "but M. Dalibard has rallied me on the
subject, and I was so angry with him that when you touched on it, I
thought more of my quarrel with him than of poor timid Mr. Mainwaring
himself. Come, now, own it, dear sir! M. Dalibard has instilled this
strange fancy into your head?"

"No, 'S life; if he had taken such a liberty, I should have lost my
librarian. No, I assure you, it was rather Vernon; you know true love is
jealous."

"Vernon!" thought Lucretia; "he must go, and at once." Sliding from her
uncle's arms to the stool at his feet, she then led the conversation
more familiarly back into the channel it had lost; and when at last
she escaped, it was with the understanding that, without promise or
compromise, Mr. Vernon should return to London at once, and be put upon
the ordeal through which she felt assured it was little likely he should
pass with success.

CHAPTER IV. GUY'S OAK.

Three weeks afterwards, the life at Laughton seemed restored to the
cheerful and somewhat monotonous tranquillity of its course, before
chafed and disturbed by the recent interruptions to the stream. Vernon
had departed, satisfied with the justice of the trial imposed on him,
and far too high-spirited to seek to extort from niece or uncle any
engagement beyond that which, to a nice sense of honour, the trial
itself imposed. His memory and his heart were still faithful to Mary;
but his senses, his fancy, his vanity, were a little involved in his
success with the heiress. Though so free from all mercenary meanness,
Mr. Vernon was still enough man of the world to be sensible of the
advantages of the alliance which had first been pressed on him by Sir
Miles, and from which Lucretia herself appeared not to be averse. The
season of London was over, but there was always a set, and that set the
one in which Charley Vernon principally moved, who found town fuller
than the country. Besides, he went occasionally to Brighton, which was
then to England what Baiae was to Rome. The prince was holding gay court
at the Pavilion, and that was the atmosphere which Vernon was habituated
to breathe. He was no parasite of royalty; he had that strong personal
affection to the prince which it is often the good fortune of royalty to
attract. Nothing is less founded than the complaint which poets put into
the lips of princes, that they have no friends,--it is, at least, their
own perverse fault if that be the case; a little amiability, a little of