er,--Sir Miles Warrington; ran away with--beg your pardon,
Miss Bell. Sir Miles was a very well known man in London, and a friend
of the Prince of Wales, This gentleman is a man of the greatest talents,
the very highest accomplishments,--sure to get on, if he had a motive to
put his energies to work."

Laura blushed for herself whilst the Major was talking and praising
Arthur's hero. As she looked at Warrington's manly face, and dark,
melancholy eyes, this young person had been speculating about him, and
had settled in her mind that he must have been the victim of an unhappy
attachment; and as she caught herself so speculating, why, Miss Bell
blushed.

Warrington got chambers hard by,--Grenier's chambers in Flag Court; and
having executed Pen's task with great energy in the morning, his delight
and pleasure of an afternoon was to come and sit with the sick man's
company in the sunny autumn evenings; and he had the honour more than
once of giving Miss Bell his arm for a walk in the Temple Gardens; to
take which pastime, when the frank Laura asked of Helen permission,
the Major eagerly said, "Yes, yes, begad--of course you go out with
him--it's like the country, you know; everybody goes out with everybody
in the Gardens, and there are beadles, you know, and that sort of
thing--everybody walks in the Temple Gardens." If the great arbiter of
morals did not object, why should simple Helen? She was glad that her
girl should have such fresh air as the river could give, and to see
her return with heightened colour and spirits from these harmless
excursions.

Laura and Helen had come, you must know, to a little explanation.
When the news arrived of Pen's alarming illness, Laura insisted upon
accompanying the terrified mother to London, would not hear of the
refusal which the still angry Helen gave her, and, when refused a second
time yet more sternly, and when it seemed that the poor lost lad's life
was despaired of, and when it was known that his conduct was such as to
render all thoughts of union hopeless, Laura had, with many tears, told
her mother a secret with which every observant person who reads this
story was acquainted already. Now she never could marry him, was she to
be denied the consolation of owning how fondly, how truly, how entirely
she had loved him? The mingling tears of the woman appeased the agony of
their grief somewhat; and the sorrows and terrors of their journey were
at least in so far mitigated that