in, on my word! No, mademoiselle, we all
have our secrets" (says the Squire, here making his best French bow).
"No, Theo, there was nothing in the shrubbery--only nuts, my child!
No, Miles, my son, we don't tell all, even to the most indulgent of
fathers--and if I tell what happened in a landau on the Hampstead Road,
on the 25th of May, 1760, may the Chevalier Ruspini pull out every tooth
in my head!"

"Pray tell, papa!" cries mamma: "or, as Jobson, who drove us, is in your
service now, perhaps you will have him in from the stables! I insist
upon your telling!"

"What is, then, this mystery?" asks mademoiselle, in her pretty French
accent, of my wife.

"Eh, ma fille!" whispers the lady. "Thou wouldst ask me what I said? I
said 'Yes!'--behold all I said." And so 'tis my wife has peached, and
not I; and this was the sum of our conversation, as the carriage, all
too swiftly as I thought, galloped towards Hampstead, and flew
back again. Theo had not agreed to fly in the face of her honoured
parents--no such thing. But we would marry no other person; no, not if
we lived to be as old as Methuselah; no, not the Prince of Wales
himself would she take. Her heart she had given away with her papa's
consent--nay, order--it was not hers to resume. So kind a father must
relent one of these days; and, if George would keep his promise--were it
now, or were it in twenty years, or were it in another world, she knew
she should never break hers.

Hetty's face beamed with delight when, my little interview over, she
saw Theo's countenance wearing a sweet tranquillity. All the doctor's
medicine has not done her so much good, the fond sister said. The girls
went home after their act of disobedience. I gave up the place which I
had held during a brief period of happiness by my dear invalid's side.
Hetty skipped back into her seat, and Charley on to his box. He told me
in after days, that it was a very dull, stupid sermon he had heard. The
little chap was too orthodox to love dissenting preachers' sermons.

Hetty was not the only one of the family who remarked her sister's
altered countenance and improved spirits. I am told that on the girls'
return home their mother embraced both of them, especially the invalid,
with more than common ardour of affection. "There was nothing like a
country ride," Aunt Lambert said, "for doing her dear Theo good. She
had been on the road to Hampstead, had she? She must have another ride
to-morrow. Heaven be