features, he left her to enjoy her bad
taste, and taking his sister by the arm, detained her a little behind
the rest of the party.

"So I find, Mary, that your neighbour has neither become more lively nor
less learned during my absence."

"We lacked your patience and wisdom to instruct us, Hector."

"Thank you, my dear sister. But you have got a wiser, if not so lively
an addition to your society, than your unworthy brother--Pray, who is
this Mr. Lovel, whom our old uncle has at once placed so high in his
good graces?--he does not use to be so accessible to strangers."

"Mr. Lovel, Hector, is a very gentleman-like young man."

"Ay,--that is to say, he bows when he comes into a room, and wears a coat
that is whole at the elbows."

"No, brother; it says a great deal more. It says that his manners and
discourse express the feelings and education of the higher class."

"But I desire to know what is his birth and his rank in society, and
what is his title to be in the circle in which I find him domesticated?"

"If you mean, how he comes to visit at Monkbarns, you must ask my uncle,
who will probably reply, that he invites to his own house such company
as he pleases; and if you mean to ask Sir Arthur, you must know that
Mr. Lovel rendered Miss Wardour and him a service of the most important
kind."

"What! that romantic story is true, then?--And pray, does the valorous
knight aspire, as is befitting on such occasions, to the hand of the
young lady whom he redeemed from peril? It is quite in the rule of
romance, I am aware; and I did think that she was uncommonly dry to me
as we walked together, and seemed from time to time as if she watched
whether she was not giving offence to her gallant cavalier."

"Dear Hector," said his sister, "if you really continue to nourish any
affection for Miss Wardour"--

"If, Mary?--what an if was there!"

"--I own I consider your perseverance as hopeless."

"And why hopeless, my sage sister?" asked Captain M'Intyre: "Miss
Wardour, in the state of her father's affairs, cannot pretend to much
fortune;--and, as to family, I trust that of Mlntyre is not inferior."

"But, Hector," continued his sister, "Sir Arthur always considers us as
members of the Monkbarns family."

"Sir Arthur may consider what he pleases," answered the Highlander
scornfully; "but any one with common sense will consider that the wife
takes rank from the husband, and that my father's pedigree of fifteen
unble