asts, and feel their heart-throbs? I
protest, for one, love is sacred. Wherever I see it (as one sometimes
may in this world) shooting suddenly out of two pair of eyes; or
glancing sadly even from one pair; or looking down from the mother to
the baby in her lap; or from papa at his girl's happiness as she is
whirling round the room with the captain; or from John Anderson, as his
old wife comes into the room--the bonne vieille, the ever peerless among
women; wherever we see that signal, I say, let us salute it. It is not
only wrong to kiss and tell, but to tell about kisses. Everybody who
has been admitted to the mystery,--hush about it. Down with him qui Deae
sacrum vulgarit arcanae. Beware how you dine with him, he will print
your private talk: as sure as you sail with him, he will throw you over.

Whilst Harry's love of battle has led him to smell powder--to rush upon
reluctantes dracones, and to carry wounded comrades out of fire, George
has been pursuing an amusement much more peaceful and delightful to
him; penning sonnets to his mistress's eyebrow, mayhap; pacing in the
darkness under her window, and watching the little lamp which shone upon
her in her chamber; finding all sorts of pretexts for sending little
notes which don't seem to require little answers, but get them; culling
bits out of his favourite poets, and flowers out of Covent Garden
for somebody's special adornment and pleasure; walking to St. James's
Church, singing very likely out of the same Prayer-book, and never
hearing one word of the sermon, so much do other thoughts engross him;
being prodigiously affectionate to all Miss Theo's relations--to her
little brother and sister at school; to the elder at college; to Miss
Hetty, with whom he engages in gay passages of wit; and to mamma, who is
half in love with him herself, Martin Lambert says; for if fathers are
sometimes sulky at the appearance of the destined son-in-law, is it not
a fact that mothers become sentimental and, as it were, love their own
loves over again?

Gumbo and Sady are for ever on the trot between Southampton Row and
Dean Street. In the summer months all sorts of junketings and
pleasure-parties are devised; and there are countless proposals to go
to Ranelagh, to Hampstead, to Vauxhall, to Marylebone Gardens, and what
not. George wants the famous tragedy copied out fair for the stage, and
who can write such a beautiful Italian hand as Miss Theo? As the sheets
pass to and fro they