came
out now a bright and witty young woman, full of vivacity, modesty, and
sensibility. Time cured Compton of his one defect. Ruperta stopped
growing at fifteen, but Compton went slowly on; caught her at
seventeen, and at nineteen had passed her by a head. He won a
scholarship at Oxford, he rowed in college races, and at last in the
University race on the Thames.

Ruperta stood, in peerless beauty, dark blue from throat to feet, and
saw his boat astern of his rival, saw it come up with, and creep ahead,
amid the roars of the multitude. When she saw her lover, with bare
corded arms, as brown as a berry, and set teeth, filling his glorious
part in that manly struggle within eight yards of her, she confessed he
was not a boy now.

But Lady Bassett accepted no such evidence: being pestered to let them
marry at twenty years of age, she clogged her consent with one
condition--they must live three years at Huntercombe as man and wife.

"No boy of twenty," said she, "can understand a young woman of that
age. I must be in the house to prevent a single misunderstanding
between my beloved children."

The young people, who both adored her, voted the condition reasonable.
They were married, and a wing of the spacious building allotted to
them.

For their sakes let us hope that their wedded life, now happily
commenced, will furnish me no materials for another tale: the happiest
lives are uneventful.

The foreign gent recovered his wound, but acquired rheumatism and a
dislike for midnight expeditions.

Reginald galloped a year or two over seven hundred miles of colony,
sowing his wild oats as he flew, but is now a prosperous squatter, very
fond of sleeping in the open air. England was not big enough for the
bold Bohemian. He does very well where he is.

Old Meyrick died, and left his wife a little estate in the next county.
Drake asked her hand at the funeral. She married him in six months, and
migrated to the estate in question; for Sir Charles refused her a lease
of his farm, not choosing to have her near him.

Her new abode was in the next parish to her sister's.

La Marsh set herself to convert Mary, and often exhorted her to
penitence; she bore this pretty well for some time, being overawed by
old reminiscences of sisterly superiority: but at last her vanity
rebelled. "Repent! and Repent!" cried she. "Why you be like a cuckoo,
all in one song. One would think I had been and robbed a church. 'Tis
all very well for y