h to crush every hope in our present
relative situation?--do not carry your resolutions farther--why urge what
would be your conduct if Sir Arthur's objections could be removed?"

"It is indeed vain, Mr. Lovel," said Miss Wardour, "because their
removal is impossible; and I only wish, as your friend, and as one who
is obliged to you for her own and her father's life, to entreat you to
suppress this unfortunate attachment--to leave a country which affords
no scope for your talents, and to resume the honourable line of the
profession which you seem to have abandoned."

"Well, Miss Wardour, your wishes shall be obeyed;--have patience with me
one little month, and if, in the course of that space, I cannot show you
such reasons for continuing my residence at Fairport, as even you shall
approve of, I will bid adieu to its vicinity, and, with the same breath,
to all my hopes of happiness."

"Not so, Mr. Lovel; many years of deserved happiness, founded on a more
rational basis than your present wishes, are, I trust, before, you.
But it is full time, to finish this conversation. I cannot force you to
adopt my advice--I cannot shut the door of my father's house against the
preserver of his life and mine; but the sooner Mr. Lovel can teach his
mind to submit to the inevitable disappointment of wishes which have
been so rashly formed, the more highly he will rise in my esteem--and, in
the meanwhile, for his sake as well as mine, he must excuse my putting
an interdict upon conversation on a subject so painful."

A servant at this moment announced that Sir Arthur desired to speak to
Mr. Oldbuck in his dressing-room.

"Let me show you the way," said Miss Wardour, who apparently dreaded
a continuation of her tete-a-tete with Lovel, and she conducted the
Antiquary accordingly to her father's apartment.

Sir Arthur, his legs swathed in flannel, was stretched on the couch.
"Welcome, Mr. Oldbuck," he said; "I trust you have come better off than
I have done from the inclemency of yesterday evening?"

"Truly, Sir Arthur, I was not so much exposed to it--I kept terra
firma--you fairly committed yourself to the cold night-air in the most
literal of all senses. But such adventures become a gallant knight
better than a humble esquire,--to rise on the wings of the night-wind--to
dive into the bowels of the earth. What news from our subterranean Good
Hope!--the terra incognita of Glen-Withershins?"

"Nothing good as yet," said the Baronet,