, obstinately, and replied to his entreaties
with counter-supplications that he should urge me to accept old
Riversley. The conflicts went on between those two daily, and I heard of
them from Heriot at night. He refused to comprehend her determination
under the head of anything save madness. Varied by reproaches of me for
my former inveterate blindness, he raved upon Janet's madness
incessantly, swearing that he would not be beaten. I told him his efforts
were useless, but thought them friendly, and so they were, only Janet's
resistance had fired his vanity, and he stalked up and down my room
talking a mixture of egregious coxcombry and hearty good sense that might
have shown one the cause he meant to win had become personal to him.
Temple, who was sometimes in consultation with him, and was always amused
by his quasi-fanfaronade, assured me that Herriot was actually scheming.
The next we heard of him was, that he had been seen at a whitebait hotel
down the river drunk with Edbury. Janet also heard of that, and declined
to see Heriot again.

Our last days marched frightfully fast. Janet had learnt that any the
most distant allusion to her marriage day was an anguish to the man who
was not to marry her, so it was through my aunt Dorothy that I became
aware of Julia Bulsted's kindness in offering to take charge of my father
for a term. Lady Sampleman undertook to be hostess to him for one night,
the eve of Janet's nuptials. He was quiet, unlikely to give annoyance to
persons not strongly predisposed to hear sentences finished and
exclamations fall into their right places.

Adieu to my darling! There have been women well won; here was an adorable
woman well lost. After twenty years of slighting her, did I fancy she
would turn to me and throw a man over in reward of my ultimate recovery
of my senses?--or fancy that one so tenacious as she had proved would
snap a tie depending on her pledged word? She liked Edbury; she saw the
best of him, and liked him. The improved young lord was her handiwork.
After the years of humiliation from me, she had found herself courted by
a young nobleman who clung to her for help, showed improvement, and
brought her many compliments from a wondering world. She really felt that
she was strength and true life to him. She resisted Heriot: she resisted
a more powerful advocate, and this was the princess Ottilia. My aunt
Dorothy told me that the princess had written. Janet either did or
affected to