ct with him. The
little personal services he required, he always solicited, never
commanded; and what he could with any propriety do himself, he always
did, without seeking other assistance.

A quiet and unostentatious inmate of the professor's, time rolled
rapidly, but gently and imperceptibly, over the head of the young earl,
until a single week only intervened between the moment referred to, and
the period fixed on for his return to Oxton Hall.

Thus, nearly six months had elapsed, not a very long period, but one in
which much may be accomplished, and in which many a change may take
place. And by such features were the six months marked, which the young
Earl of Wistonbury had spent in the house of Professor Lockerby. In that
time, by dint of unrelaxing assiduity and intense application, he had
acquired a respectable knowledge of both Latin and Greek, and in that
time, too, he had taken a step which was to affect the whole tenor of
his after life, and to make him either happy or miserable, as it had
been fortunately or unfortunately made. What that step was we shall
divulge, through precisely the same singular process by which it
actually came to the knowledge of the other parties interested.

One evening, at the period to which we a short while since
alluded--namely, about a week previous to the expiry of the proposed
term of the earl's residence with Professor Lockerby--as Jessy Flowerdew
was about to remove the tea equipage from the table of the little
parlour in which the professor and his noble pupil usually conducted
their studies, the latter suddenly rose from his seat, and, looking at
their fair handmaiden with a serious countenance, said--

'Jessy, my love, you must not perform this service again, nor any other
of a similar kind. You are now my wife--you are now Countess of
Wistonbury.'

We leave it to the reader to imagine, after his own surprise has a
little subsided, what was that of the worthy professor, on hearing his
noble pupil make so extraordinary, so astounding a declaration--a
declaration not less remarkable for its import, than for the occasion on
which, and the manner in which it was made.

On recovering from his astonishment, 'My lord,' said the good professor,
with a grave and stern countenance, 'be good enough to inform me what
this extraordinary conduct means? What can have been your motive, my
lord, for using the highly improper and most unguarded language which I
have just now heard