he must be rather a sharp hand. He came up to me in the library, told me he had breakfasted with you, and that you regretted your engagement to me—of which I then knew nothing-because it would keep you from him; and all this he did so plausibly, and so coolly, that he made me understand, without directly saying it, that you wished to dine here instead of at Ashmead, in order to keep the house quiet, and that, moreover, your plan was that I should ask him to meet you."

"Well," said I, "give him the full credit for his ingenuity, and believe that I was perfectly innocent of any such conspiracy, and never was more surprised in my life than when I found him here."

"Never mind," said Wells; "I wish we had not such good, or rather bad reasons for driving him away. Gilbert, rely upon it, that boy will not get over it.”

"I fear not," said I.

"We had better prepare poor Harriet for the possibility of his death," said Wells; "and, moreover, I am anxious to see her mother. I

have had a very extraordinary communication from the Lieutenant touching his affair with Fanny, of which I do not exactly understand the meaning."

"Come," said I, "let us be going;" and we mechanically proceeded to prepare for our walk to Ashmead, both of us occupied with a variety of feelings of the most unpleasant character.

During the trajet, however, Wells imparted to me some particulars of his difficulties; for he was now struggling between an anxiety to promote his daughter's happiness, and a determination to support what he called the dignity of her cha

racter.

That Lieutenant Merman was attached to Fanny there could be no doubt, at least as much attached as an abrupt, iron-nerved man, wholly devoid of delicacy, or that sort of feeling which I hold to be essential to true love, could be; and, although particularly disagreeable to me, there could be as little doubt that Miss Fanny Wells was extremely well disposed towards him. The avowed want of fortune on the

part of the young lady exonerated him in her eyes from any imputation of interested motives in his affection, and his implicit belief that his aunt would make him her heir, fully justified his persisting in attentions which he all along proposed to carry to an honourable conclusion.

So far all was well; nobody could find fault, and certainly, least of all, Wells, to whose notions about marriage I have so often referred. The truth was, that when the Lieutenant found that his inheritance was saddled with a condition, he preferred the money with the incumbrance, to subjecting himself to incumbrances without the

money.

"But the Lieutenant and his aunt had reckoned without their host. Merman when he had explained the position in which he was placed, by the pertinacious affection of his aunt Miss Maloney, and had, in fact, broken off the affair with Fanny, proceeded to the old lady, the source of all his future prosperity, and was most cordially received; his prompt appearance in answer to

her summons practically evincing his readiness to fall into her arrangement.

"Dear Philip,'" said his aunt, "you will find Millicent Maloney a very charming young woman. I am extremely sorry that you have seen so little of her, but your being quartered in England, and our living in Ireland, have kept you too long apart. My plan of settling you together is not one of to-day, but I had my reasons for not communicating it to you in direct terms before. The moment you told me your intentions of proposing for another young lady, I felt it necessary to open my heart to you.'

"I wish,' said the Lieutenant, it had so happened that I could have been aware of your views before-for really Miss Wells is a nice girl; and I have got so completely habituated to the ways of her family, that it is painful to myself not to speak of its being rather unfair to her, to break off such an engagement. That, however, is'nt much, because I fairly told her father, it would be madness in me to marry her without

adequate means for her support the wife of a subaltern, with, perhaps, half a dozen children, destined to be stowed away in a bare-walled den in barracks, or cooped up in country quarters in a two-windowed drawing-room over a chandler's shop, ought not to be taken from the quiet comforts of such a house as Blissfold Rectory. If I had the means

"Ay, ay,' said the aunt, but you have not the means, Philip. All I want you to do is to see Millicent-her father was one of the handsomest men that ever stepped; he was, as you know, one of your honourable profession, and Millicent is naturally attached to those who, like yourself, belong to it.'

"And her mother?' said Philip

"Her mother,' said the aunt, was a young lady of good family-it was a runaway match. I knew her well-intimately-poor girl, she died within a very short time of Millicent's birth, who, consequently, never knew a mother's care.