Miss Goodwin, though timid and nervous, was, nevertheless, in many
things, a girl of spirit, and possessed a great deal of natural wit and
penetration. On that day Woodward exerted himself to the utmost, with
a hope of making a favorable impression upon her. He calculated a good
deal upon her isolated position and necessary ignorance of life and the
world, and in doing so, he calculated, as thousands of self-sufficient
libertines, in their estimate of women, have done both before and since.
He did not know that there is an intuitive spirit in the female heart
which often enables it to discover the true character of the opposite
sex; and to discriminate between the real and the assumed with almost
infallible accuracy. But, independently of this, there was in Woodward's
manner a hardness of outline, and in his conversation an unconscious
absence of all reality and truth, together with a cold, studied
formality, dry, sharp, and presumptuous, that required no extraordinary
penetration to discover; for the worst of it was, that he made himself
disagreeably felt, and excited those powers of scrutiny and analysis
that are so peculiar to the generality of the other sex. In fact, he
sought his way home in anything but an agreeable mood. He thought to
have met Alice an ignorant country girl, whom he might play upon; but he
found himself completely mistaken, because, fortunately for herself, he
had taken her upon one of her strong points. As it was, however, whilst
he could not help admiring the pertinence of her replies, neither could
he help experiencing something of a bitter feeling against her, because
she indulged in them at his own expense; whilst against O'Connor, who
bantered him with such spirit and success, and absolutely turned
him into ridicule in her presence, he almost entertained a personal
resentment. His only hope now was in her parents, who seemed as anxious
to entertain his proposals with favor as Alice was to reject them with
disdain. As for Alice herself, her opinion of him is a matter with which
the reader is already acquainted.

Our hero was about half way home when he overtook a thin, lank old man,
who was a rather important character in the eyes of the ignorant people
at the period of which we write. He was tall, and so bare of flesh, that
when asleep he might pass for the skeleton of a corpse. His eyes were
red, cunning, and sinister-looking; his lips thin, and from under the
upper one projected a single t