-"

"Will have nothing, I suppose?" exclaimed Randal, trying his best to
look overjoyed till he had got his paws out of the trap into which he
had so incautiously thrust them.

"Nay, her portion by our laws--to say nothing of my affection--would far
exceed the ordinary dower which the daughters of London merchants bring
to the sons of British peers. Whoever marries Violante, provided I
regain my estates, must submit to the cares which the poets assure us
ever attend on wealth."

"Oh!" groaned Randal, as if already bowed beneath the cares, and
sympathizing with the poets.

"And now, let me present you to your betrothed." Although poor Randal
had been remorselessly hurried along what Schiller calls the "gamut
of feeling," during the last three minutes, down to the deep chord of
despair at the abrupt intelligence that his betrothed was no heiress
after all; thence ascending to vibrations of pleasant doubt as to the
unborn usurper of her rights, according to the prophecies of parturitive
science; and lastly, swelling into a concord of all sweet thoughts at
the assurance that, come what might, she would be a wealthier bride
than a peer's son could discover in the matrimonial Potosi of Lombard
Street,--still the tormented lover was not there allowed to repose
his exhausted though ravished soul. For, at the idea of personally
confronting the destined bride--whose very existence had almost vanished
from his mind's eye, amidst the golden showers that it saw falling
divinely round her--Randal was suddenly reminded of the exceeding
bluntness with which, at their last interview, it had been his policy to
announce his suit, and of the necessity of an impromptu falsetto suited
to the new variations that tossed him again to and fro on the merciless
gamut. However, he could not recoil from her father's proposition,
though, in order to prepare Riccabocca for Violante's representation,
he confessed pathetically that his impatience to obtain her consent and
baffle Peschiera had made him appear a rude and presumptuous wooer. The
philosopher, who was disposed to believe one kind of courtship to be
much the same as another, in cases where the result of all courtships
was once predetermined, smiled benignly, patted Randal's thin cheek,
with a "Pooh, pooh, pazzie!" and left the room to summon Violante.

"If knowledge be power," soliloquized Randal, "ability is certainly good
luck, as Miss Edgeworth shows in that story of Murad the Unlucky