tector of Miss Bertram. 'No,' said he to himself, 'I will not endanger
the comfort of my Lucy's present retreat until I can offer her a home of
her own.'

With this valorous resolution, which he maintained although his horse,
from constant habit, turned his head down the avenue of Woodbourne, and
although he himself passed the lodge twice every day, Charles Hazlewood
withstood a strong inclination to ride down just to ask how the young
ladies were, and whether he could be of any service to them during
Colonel Mannering's absence. But on the second occasion he felt the
temptation so severe that he resolved not to expose himself to it a third
time; and, contenting himself with sending hopes and inquiries and so
forth to Woodbourne, he resolved to make a visit long promised to a
family at some distance, and to return in such time as to be one of the
earliest among Mannering's visitors who should congratulate his safe
arrival from his distant and hazardous expedition to Edinburgh.
Accordingly he made out his visit, and, having arranged matters so as to
be informed within a few hours after Colonel Mannering reached home, he
finally resolved to take leave of the friends with whom he had spent the
intervening time, with the intention of dining at Woodbourne, where he
was in a great measure domesticated; and this (for he thought much more
deeply on the subject than was necessary) would, he flattered himself,
appear a simple, natural, and easy mode of conducting himself.

Fate, however, of which lovers make so many complaints, was in this case
unfavourable to Charles Hazlewood. His horse's shoes required an
alteration, in consequence of the fresh weather having decidedly
commenced. The lady of the house where he was a visitor chose to indulge
in her own room till a very late breakfast hour. His friend also insisted
on showing him a litter of puppies which his favourite pointer bitch had
produced that morning. The colours had occasioned some doubts about the
paternity--a weighty question of legitimacy, to the decision of which
Hazlewood's opinion was called in as arbiter between his friend and his
groom, and which inferred in its consequences which of the litter should
be drowned, which saved. Besides, the Laird himself delayed our young
lover's departure for a considerable time, endeavouring, with long and
superfluous rhetoric, to insinuate to Sir Robert Hazlewood, through the
medium of his son, his own particular ideas respecti