gratitude the artless
affection of such a warm young heart.

What was that story meanwhile which came round to our friends, of young
Mr. Lutestring and young Mr. Drabshaw the Quaker having a boxing-match
at a tavern in the city, and all about this young lady? They fell
out over their cups, and fought probably. Why did Mr. Draper, who had
praised her so at first, tell such stories now against her grandfather?
"I suspect," says Madame de Bernstein, "that he wants the girl for some
client or relation of his own; and that he tells these tales in order to
frighten all suitors from her. When she and her grandfather came to me,
she behaved perfectly well; and I confess, sir, I thought it was a great
pity that you should prefer yonder red-cheeked countrified little chit,
without a halfpenny, to this pretty, wild, artless girl, with such a
fortune as I hear she has."

"Oh, she has been with you, has she, aunt?" asks George of his relative.

"Of course she has been with me," the other replies, curtly. "Unless
your brother has been so silly as to fall in love with that other little
Lambert girl----"

"Indeed, ma'am, I think I can say he has not," George remarks.

"Why, then, when he comes back with Mr. Wolfe, should he not take
a fancy to this little person, as his mamma wishes--only, to do us
justice, we Esmonds care very little for what our mammas wish--and marry
her, and set up beside you in Virginia? She is to have a great fortune,
which you won't touch. Pray, why should it go out of the family?"

George now learned that Mr. Van den Bosch and his granddaughter had been
often at Madame de Bernstein's house. Taking his favourite walk with his
favourite companion to Kensington Gardens, he saw Mr. Van den Bosch's
chariot turning into Kensington Square. The Americans were going to
visit Lady Castlewood, then? He found, on some little inquiry, that they
had been more than once with her ladyship. It was, perhaps, strange
that they should have said nothing of their visits to George; but, being
little curious of other people's affairs, and having no intrigues or
mysteries of his own, George was quite slow to imagine them in
other people. What mattered to him how often Kensington entertained
Bloomsbury, or Bloomsbury made its bow at Kensington?

A number of things were happening at both places, of which our Virginian
had not the slightest idea. Indeed, do not things happen under our eyes,
and we not see them? Are not comedies an