ted by her father, who
believed their congeniality of tempers would render such an alliance
happy and prosperous.

Miss Williamson listened to the appeals of her admirer, we must admit,
with satisfaction; and though his addresses were not distasteful, she
felt a pang in her heart that plainly told her it was already possessed
by another. It required but this spark to kindle the flame that had long
been smoldering in her breast; and at the moment when, had she not known
John Ferguson, she would have been pleased and flattered with the
protestations of her suitor, she felt disappointed and distressed that
those proposals had not emanated from another source. The very
contemplation of this disappointment increased the warmth and ardour of
her affection for young Ferguson, while it annihilated all thoughts of
the other; and even, respecting as she did the wishes of her father, she
could offer no encouragement to his medical friend. The young son of
Galen, unacquainted as he was with the real state of the lady's
feelings, attributed her taciturn abstraction to the innate modesty of
her nature, and therefore delicately refrained from pressing proposals
which he perceived she was not prepared to entertain. Contemplating the
resumption of the subject at a future time, when the lady's mind would
have in all probability recovered the shock, which he imagined was
occasioned by the novelty of her situation, he left her, while he
expressed the deepest devotion and unalterable attachment.

Shortly after this interview, the young men met at the table of their
hospitable host; and there for the first time John Ferguson discovered
the position in which the young physician stood to the family. He
watched with a jealous eye the movements of his rival, who, though
noticing a peculiarity in his young friend's manner, never dreamt of the
true cause of his dejection. The contention in the breast of the lady
was equally painful; for, while she divined the nature of Ferguson's
melancholy, and was aware that the young doctor's attentions to her
would lead her taciturn lover to imagine she was gratified with and
encouraged them, she could give him no clue to her own feelings; while
her devotion to parental authority deterred her from slighting her more
voluble admirer, and her kind and amiable disposition shrank from
assuming a state of feelings foreign to her nature. John Ferguson
retired from the presence of his loved one, with a heavier heart