rs you to any of them."

I said this with a great gulp. I was obstinately bent on plumbing the
depth of my own fears.

Sir Sedley rose; he laid his hand kindly on mine, and said, "Do not let
Fanny Trevanion torment you even more than her father does!"

"I don't understand you, Sir Sedley."

"But if I understand you, that is more to the purpose. A girl like Miss
Trevanion is cruel till she discovers she has a heart. It is not safe to
risk one's own with any woman till she has ceased to be a coquette. My
dear young friend, if you took life less in earnest, I should spare you
the pain of these hints. Some men sow flowers, some plant trees: you are
planting a tree under which you will soon find that no flower will grow.
Well and good, if the tree could last to bear fruit and give shade;
but beware lest you have to tear it up one day or other; for then--What
then? Why, you will find your whole life plucked away with its roots!"

Sir Sedley said these last words with so serious an emphasis that I
was startled from the confusion I had felt at the former part of his
address. He paused long, tapped his snuff-box, inhaled a pinch slowly,
and continued, with his more accustomed sprightliness,--

"Go as much as you can into the world. Again I say, 'Enjoy yourself.'
And again I ask, what is all this labor to do for you? On some men,
far less eminent than Trevanion, it would impose a duty to aid you in a
practical career, to secure you a public employment; not so on him. He
would not mortgage an inch of his independence by asking a favor from a
minister. He so thinks occupation the delight of life that he occupies
you out of pure affection. He does not trouble his head about your
future. He supposes your father will provide for that, and does not
consider that meanwhile your work leads to nothing! Think over all this.
I have now bored you enough."

I was bewildered; I was dumb. These practical men of the world, how they
take us by surprise! Here had I come to sound Sir Sedley, and here was I
plumbed, gauged, measured, turned inside out, without having got an inch
beyond the sur face of that smiling, debonnaire, unruffled ease. Yet,
with his invariable delicacy, in spite of all this horrible frankness,
Sir Sedley had not said a word to wound what he might think the more
sensitive part of my amour propre,--not a word as to the inadequacy of
my pretensions to think seriously of Fanny Trevanion. Had we been the
Celadon and Chloe o