but, in a word, 'twas the seventeenth
year of a maiden's life.

More and more such matters gained on her motherless necessity. Strictly
anxious as she was to do the right thing always, she felt more and more
upon every occasion (unless it was something particular) that her cousin
need not so impress his cousinly salutation.

Albert de Wichehalse (who received that name before it became so
inevitable) was that same worthy boy grown up as to whom the baron
had felt compunctions, highly honourable to either party, touching his
defeasance; or rather, perhaps, as to interception of his presumptive
heirship by the said Albert, or at least by his mother contemplated. And
Albert's father had entrusted him to his uncle's special care and love,
having comfortably made up his mind, before he left this evil world,
that his son should have a good slice of it.

Now, therefore, the baron's chief desire was to heal all breaches
and make things pleasant, and to keep all the family property snug by
marrying his fair Jennyfried (or "Frida," as she was called at home)
to her cousin Albert, now a fine young fellow of five-and-twenty. De
Wichehalse was strongly attached to his nephew, and failed to see any
good reason why a certain large farm near Martinhoe, quite a huge cantle
from the Ley estates, which by a prior devise must fall to Albert
upon his own demise, should be allowed to depart in that way from his
posthumous control.

However, like most of our fallible race, he went the worst possible way
to work in pursuit of his favourite purpose. He threw the young people
together daily, and dinned into the ears of each perpetual praise of
the other. This seemed to answer well enough in the case of the simple
Albert. He could never have too much of his lively cousin's company,
neither could he weary of sounding her sweet excellence. But with the
young maid it was not so. She liked the good Albert well enough, and
never got out of his way at all. Moreover, sometimes his curly hair and
bright moustache, when they came too near, would raise not a positive
flutter, perhaps, but a sense of some fugitive movement in the
unexplored distances of the heart. Still, this might go on for years,
and nothing more to come of it. Frida loved her father best of all the
world, at present.

CHAPTER II.

There happened to be at this time an old fogy--of course it is most
distressing to speak of anyone disrespectfully; but when one thinks
of the tr