e
smooth blue water, faintly, like reflections of a flight of gulls.

Infants are said to have their ideas, and why not young ladies? Those
who write of their perplexities in descriptions comical in their length
are unkind to them, by making them appear the simplest of the creatures
of fiction; and most of us, I am sure, would incline to believe in
them if they were only some bit more lightly touched. Those troubled
sentiments of our young lady of the comfortable classes are quite worthy
of mention. Her poor little eye poring as little fishlike as possible
upon the intricate, which she takes for the infinite, has its place in
our history, nor should we any of us miss the pathos of it were it not
that so large a space is claimed for the exposure. As it is, one has
almost to fight a battle to persuade the world that she has downright
thoughts and feelings, and really a superhuman delicacy is required
in presenting her that she may be credible. Even then--so much being
accomplished the thousands accustomed to chapters of her when she is in
the situation of Annette will be disappointed by short sentences, just
as of old the Continental eater of oysters would have been offended at
the offer of an exchange of two live for two dozen dead ones. Annette
was in the grand crucial position of English imaginative prose. I
recognize it, and that to this the streamlets flow, thence pours the
flood. But what was the plain truth? She had brought herself to think
she ought to sacrifice herself to Tinman, and her evasions with Herbert,
manifested in tricks of coldness alternating with tones of regret,
ended, as they had commenced, in a mysterious half-sullenness. She had
hardly a word to say. Let me step in again to observe that she had at
the moment no pointed intention of marrying Tinman. To her mind the
circumstances compelled her to embark on the idea of doing so, and
she saw the extremity in an extreme distance, as those who are taking
voyages may see death by drowning. Still she had embarked.

"At all events, I have your word for it that you don't dislike me?" said
Herbert.

"Oh! no," she sighed. She liked him as emigrants the land they are
leaving.

"And you have not promised your hand?"

"No," she said, but sighed in thinking that if she could be induced to
promise it, there would not be a word of leaving England.

"Then, as you are not engaged, and don't hate me, I have a chance?" he
said, in the semi-wailful interrogative