haps you have noticed during the brief and pleasant
period of your acquaintance."

"Really, madam, it struck me that your authority over them was much more
despotic than his," said Sir Norman, in all sincerity, feeling called
upon to give the--well, I'd rather not repeat the word, which is
generally spelled with a d and a dash--his due.

"No thanks to him for that! He would make me a slave now, as he did
then, if he dared, but he has found that, poor, trodden worm as I was, I
had life enough left to turn and sting."

"Which you do with a vengeance! Oh! you're a Tartar!" remarked Sir
Norman to himself. "The saints forefend that Leoline should be like
you in temper, as she is in history and face; for if she is, my life
promises to be a pleasant one."

"This rascally crew of cut-throats, whom his villainous highness
headed," said Miranda, "were an almost immense number then, being
divided in three bodies--London cut-purses, Hounslow Heath highwaymen,
and assistant-coiners, but all owning him for their lord and master.
He told me all this himself, one day when, in an after-dinner and most
gracious mood, he made a boasting display of his wealth and greatness;
told me I was growing up very pretty indeed, and that I was shortly to
be raised to the honor and dignity, and bliss of being his wife.

"I fancy I must have had a very vague idea of what that one small word
meant, and was besides in an unusually contented and peaceful state
of mind, or I should, undoubtedly, have raised one of his cut-glass
decanters and smashed in his head with it. I know how I should receive
such an assertion from him now, but I think I took it then with a
resignation, he must have found mighty edifying; and when he went on
to tell me that all this richness and greatness were to be shared by
me when that celestial time came, I think I rather liked the idea than
otherwise. The horrible creature seemed to have woke up that day, for
the first time, and all of a sudden, to a conviction that I was in a
fair way to become a woman, and rather a handsome one, and that he had
better make sure of me before any accident interfered to take me from
him. Full of this laudable notion, he became a daily visitor of mine
from thenceforth, and made the discovery, simultaneously with myself,
that the oftener he came the less favor he found in my sight. I had,
before, tacitly disliked him, and shrank with a natural repulsion
from his dreadful ugliness; but now, from