brother will do
that"--and I promised her; and she ran away, kissing her hand to me. And
I did not say a word to Lady Kicklebury, and not above a thousand people
at Noirbourg knew that Miss Kicklebury and Captain Hicks were engaged.

And now let those who are too confident of their virtue listen to
the truthful and melancholy story which I have to relate, and humble
themselves, and bear in mind that the most perfect among us are
occasionally liable to fall. Kicklebury was not perfect,--I do not
defend his practice. He spent a great deal more time and money than was
good for him at M. Lenoir's gaming-table, and the only thing which the
young fellow never lost was his good humor. If Fortune shook her swift
wings and fled away from him, he laughed at the retreating pinions, and
you saw him dancing and laughing as gayly after losing a rouleau, as if
he was made of money, and really had the five thousand a year which
his mother said was the amount of the Kicklebury property. But when her
ladyship's jointure, and the young ladies' allowances, and the interest
of mortgages were paid out of the five thousand a year, I grieve to say
that the gallant Kicklebury's income was to be counted by hundreds and
not by thousands; so that, for any young lady who wants a carriage (and
who can live without one?) our friend the baronet is not a desirable
specimen of bachelors. Now, whether it was that the presence of his
mamma interrupted his pleasures, or certain of her ways did not please
him, or that he had lost all his money at roulette and could afford no
more, certain it is, that after about a fortnight's stay at Noirbourg,
he went off to shoot with Count Einhorn in Westphalia; he and Hicks
parting the dearest of friends, and the baronet going off on a
pony which the captain lent to him. Between him and Millikin, his
brother-in-law, there was not much sympathy: for he pronounced Mr.
Milliken to be what is called a muff; and had never been familiar with
his elder sister Lavinia, of whose poems he had a mean opinion, and who
used to tease and worry him by teaching him French, and telling tales
of him to his mamma, when he was a schoolboy home for the holidays.
Whereas, between the baronet and Miss Fanny there seemed to be the
closest affection: they walked together every morning to the waters;
they joked and laughed with each other as happily as possible. Fanny was
almost ready to tell fibs to screen her brother's malpractices from her