ay time at Sweetbriar Lodge--for the fair Alice Hawthorn had
just been married to the Squire of Deerdale, and the happy pair
(new-married people were even in those times happy, although they were
not so set down in the newspapers,) had determined to spend the
honeymoon quietly at home, like sensible people, instead of posting
off to Bath or Brighton; or mewing themselves up in some outlandish
corner of the country, where they could see and hear nothing but
themselves, until they were ready to commence the married life by
being cloyed with each other's society. The season was mid-summer, and
the weather so balmy and beautiful that after wandering about in the
woods and fields all day, and watching the moon creep stealthily up
the sky to view herself in the fountain, one felt a longing to make
his bed on the fresh turf under the katydid's bower, and sleep there.
Of course I don't mean the young and happy bridegroom. He never
dreamed of being absent from his Alice; and he even felt quite jealous
of her little sister Emma, who used sometimes to come and put her
laughing, roguish face and curly head between the lovers, as they were
sitting on the sofa or reclining on the green turf by the little
fountain.

But Alice had another sister, older than herself, and who had already
refused several excellent offers of marriage--declaring that she
intended to live and die single, unless she should fall in love with
some wandering minstrel or prince in disguise, like Lalla Rookh. Her
name was Hortensia; but on account of her proud indifference to the
attentions and compliments which were every where offered to her
wonderful beauty, she was usually called Haughty Hawthorn--a name
which seemed to please her better than all the flatteries of which she
was the object. She was already twenty-two, and ripening into the full
magnificence of glorious womanhood--her heart yet untouched by the
electric dart of love, and her fancy free as the birds of air.

Now it was quite natural that the gentle Alice, whom love had made so
happy, should willingly enter into a conspiracy with her husband and a
parcel of the young people of the neighborhood against the peace and
comfort of her haughty sister--deeming of course--as I myself am also
of opinion--that a young lady out of love ought to be supremely
miserable, whatever she herself may think about it.

Keeping in view the peculiar requisites required by Haughty in a
lover, the plan was to get up an