you one friendly piece of advice on
parting--try to make your own way in the world too. Shake yourself
clear of your own embarrassments by your own industry--a far better way
than by marrying a rich wife."

She looked very kindly at the young man as she spoke, but he did not
take the advice in the friendly spirit in which it was given. He
answered rather shortly, that he dared to say he would do as well as
other people, and then began to ask what she knew about the heir, if
she had ever seen him before, or heard Mr. Hogarth speak of him. She
answered----

"No, never; but I cannot answer questions. I cannot converse rationally
any longer. You had better go away, Mr. Dalzell, and let me have a
little rest, for I am rather weary."

The young gentleman stumbled down stairs, and rode home ruminating over
the downfall of all his cherished expectations; while Jane said to
herself, "It is over, and it is better so. He really is a smaller
character than I thought he was."

Chapter II.

Disappointment and Hope; Prose and Poetry

When Jane Melville told her cousin that her uncle had been always kind
and always reasonable, she expressed her own opinion, for she had loved
and honoured him so much that she felt no hardship in doing everything
he wished; but no one else in the house or in the neighbourhood would
have endorsed that opinion. When the rumour spread far and wide that he
had disinherited his nieces, in the expectation that the education he
had given them would enable them to provide handsomely for themselves,
the servants and workpeople about shook their heads, and said it was
"aye weel kenned that the auld laird had a bee in his bonnet;" while
the class with whom Mr. Hogarth associated on more equal terms
declared; that this last eccentricity of affection (for it was all done
out of pure love), surpassed all his other oddities with regard to the
girls, which had long been the talk of the whole country.

They had, as Jane sadly confessed, made but few friends. Their uncle's
reasonable prejudices extended to morning visits, which he called a
frivolous waste of time; and he had a similar dislike to evening
parties; not on account of a puritanic disapproval of dancing, or of
young people of different sexes meeting and having opportunities of
getting acquainted with each other, but the hours were so irrational,
and the conventional dress so unbecoming and dangerous to health, that
he had prohibited Jane and El