arley on the part of these
young people, it was agreed that they should take up their abode,
when married, in a part of the House number One hundred and something,
Bedford Row.

It will be necessary to explain to the reader that John was no other
than John Perkins, Esquire, of the Middle Temple, barrister-at-law, and
that Miss Lucy was the daughter of the late Captain Gorgon, and Marianne
Biggs, his wife. The Captain being of noble connections, younger son of
a baronet, cousin to Lord X----, and related to the Y---- family, had
angered all his relatives by marrying a very silly pretty young woman,
who kept a ladies'-school at Canterbury. She had six hundred pounds
to her fortune, which the Captain laid out in the purchase of a sweet
travelling-carriage and dressing-case for himself; and going abroad with
his lady, spent several years in the principal prisons of Europe, in one
of which he died. His wife and daughter were meantime supported by the
contributions of Mrs. Jemima Biggs, who still kept the ladies'-school.

At last a dear old relative--such a one as one reads of in
romances--died and left seven thousand pounds apiece to the two sisters,
whereupon the elder gave up schooling and retired to London; and the
younger managed to live with some comfort and decency at Brussels,
upon two hundred and ten pounds per annum. Mrs. Gorgon never touched
a shilling of her capital, for the very good reason that it was placed
entirely out of her reach; so that when she died, her daughter found
herself in possession of a sum of money that is not always to be met
with in this world.

Her aunt the baronet's lady, and her aunt the ex-schoolmistress, both
wrote very pressing invitations to her, and she resided with each for
six months after her arrival in England. Now, for a second time, she had
come to Mrs. Biggs, Caroline Place, Mecklenburgh Square. It was under
the roof of that respectable old lady that John Perkins, Esquire, being
invited to take tea, wooed and won Miss Gorgon.

Having thus described the circumstances of Miss Gorgon's life, let us
pass for a moment from that young lady, and lift up the veil of mystery
which envelopes the deeds and character of Perkins.

Perkins, too, was an orphan; and he and his Lucy, of summer evenings,
when Sol descending lingered fondly yet about the minarets of the
Foundling, and gilded the grassplots of Mecklenburgh Square--Perkins,
I say, and Lucy would often sit together in the summer