there was no
objection on either side, his daughter and I should be married; but
you see, my dearest Fanny, as there happens to be an objection on both
sides, the scheme, however well meant, is defeated.'

'On both sides!' reiterated Frances with surprise.

'Yes; on both sides,' answered he smiling.

'But how do you know that, when you've never seen Miss Seymour--at
least I thought you never had?'

'Neither have I; but I happen to know that she has not the slightest
intention of taking me for her husband.'

'Oh,' said Frances, laughing at the recollection of her own violent
antipathy to this irresistible man, who, after all, had taken her
heart by storm--'I suppose you have somehow heard that she disliked
the idea of being trammelled by an engagement to a person she never
saw, and whom she had made up her mind she could not love; but
remember, Henry, she has never seen you. How do you know that she
might not have fallen in love with you at first sight?--as somebody
else did,' she added playfully.

'Because, my dear little girl, she happens to be in love already. She
did not wait to see me, but wisely gave away her heart when she met a
man that pleased her.'

'But you're mistaken,' answered Frances, beginning to feel alarmed;
'you are indeed! I know Frances Seymour has no attachment. I know that
till she saw you--I mean that--I am certain she has no attachment, nor
ever had any.'

'Perhaps you are not altogether in her confidence.'

'O yes, I am indeed.'

Major Elliott shook his head, and smiled significantly. 'Rely on it,'
he said, 'that what I tell you is the fact; but you have probably not
seen Miss Seymour very lately, which would sufficiently account for
your ignorance of her secret. I am told that she is extremely handsome
and charming, and that she sings divinely.'

Five minutes earlier, Frances would have been delighted with this
testimony to her attractions; and would have been ready with a
repartee about the loss he would sustain in relinquishing so many
perfections for her sake; but now her heart was growing faint with
terror, and her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth. Thoughts that
would fill pages darted through her brain like lightning--dreadful
possibilities, that she had never foreseen nor thought of.

Vincent Dunbar's regiment had been in India; she knew it was one of
the _seventies_; but she had either never heard the exact number, or
she had not sufficiently attended to the subject