at I was strongly tempted to give an
additional proof of my veneration for my uncle's memory, by giving his
poor little orphan my name. Can she mean any thing by wishing me to come
to the end of the story?

"How do you mean to wind up?" she asked.

"Oh! in a most mysterious and surprising manner; but we haven't got near
the _denouement_ yet. There must be a duel, of course--a
misunderstanding--and a rival."

"Oh! Theodore Fitzhedingham has no occasion to fear a rival," said
Martha, pretending to have lost the stitch.

"No! 'Pon my word that's very good of you. Do you really think that
Maria Valentine de Courcy will prefer him to every one else?"

"She will be a very foolish, a very ungrateful girl, if she doesn't--for
hasn't he loved her ever since she was a child?"

"Well, Martha, you are certainly a very nice, a very affectionate girl;
and I may as well put your mind at rest at once by telling you"--

"Sneezum! Sneezum!"

There was old Morgan again kicking at the study door, and holloing
Sneezum with all his might. I had taken Martha's hand, and was just
going to tell her to make preparations to become Mrs Sneezum in a week
or two. I let go her hand, and rushed to the door.

"What the mischief do you want?"

"Why, here's Billy come back again," he said; "won't you come and give a
welcome to poor Billy?"

"No; I be hang'd if I do. He has never apologized for pushing me down
the steps; tell him to get out of my house; I have not forgot what alarm
my accident caused to poor Martha. Don't you remember it, my dear?"

But there sat Martha--sometimes red and sometimes white--with tears in
her eyes, and her lips half open, like the picture of St Cecilia.

"There! the very recollection of it frightens her to death. Go to your
room, my dear, and I'll send this blustering fellow out of the house."

She glided out of the study without speaking a word, and I hurried to
the drawing-room, but no Billy was there. His mother and sisters were
luckily in London, so I turned angrily round on the father.

"A pretty fellow this son of yours--never one word of apology, either to
me or Martha--I won't have him roystering here at all hours, frightening
affectionate little girls with his violence."

"Who is it he has frightened?" enquired old Morgan; "who are the
affectionate girls you mean? I'm sure he has never caused the least
alarm to his sisters in his life."

"Perhaps not--perhaps not, Mr Morgan; but there is another