lovers in the poetically passionate phraseology which is
generally thought to be appropriate for their description. A man
cannot well describe that which he has never seen nor heard; but
the absolute words and acts of one such scene did once come to the
author's knowledge. The couple were by no means plebeian, or below
the proper standard of high bearing and high breeding; they were
a handsome pair, living among educated people, sufficiently given
to mental pursuits, and in every way what a pair of polite lovers
ought to be. The all-important conversation passed in this wise. The
site of the passionate scene was the sea-shore, on which they were
walking, in autumn.

Gentleman. "Well, Miss ----, the long and short of it is this: here
I am; you can take me or leave me."

Lady--scratching a gutter on the sand with her parasol, so as to
allow a little salt water to run out of one hole into another. "Of
course, I know that's all nonsense."

Gentleman. "Nonsense! By Jove, it isn't nonsense at all: come, Jane;
here I am: come, at any rate you can say something."

Lady. "Yes, I suppose I can say something."

Gentleman. "Well, which is it to be; take me or leave me?"

Lady--very slowly, and with a voice perhaps hardly articulate,
carrying on, at the same time, her engineering works on a wider
scale. "Well, I don't exactly want to leave you."

And so the matter was settled: settled with much propriety and
satisfaction; and both the lady and gentleman would have thought, had
they ever thought about the matter at all, that this, the sweetest
moment of their lives, had been graced by all the poetry by which
such moments ought to be hallowed.

When Mary had, as she thought, properly subdued young Frank, the
offer of whose love she, at any rate, knew was, at such a period of
his life, an utter absurdity, then she found it necessary to subdue
herself. What happiness on earth could be greater than the possession
of such a love, had the true possession been justly and honestly
within her reach? What man could be more lovable than such a man as
would grow from such a boy? And then, did she not love him,--love him
already, without waiting for any change? Did she not feel that there
was that about him, about him and about herself, too, which might so
well fit them for each other? It would be so sweet to be the sister
of Beatrice, the daughter of the squire, to belong to Greshamsbury as
a part and parcel of itself.

But though sh