n--I should prefer a girl without
brothers and sisters--as a Christian damsel should be educated--say,
on the model of my son, and she may be penniless, I will pledge her to
Richard Feverel."

Lady Blandish bit her lip. "And what do you do with Richard while you
are absent on this expedition?"

"Oh!" said the baronet, "he accompanies his father."

"Then give it up. His future bride is now pinafored and
bread-and-buttery. She romps, she cries, she dreams of play and pudding.
How can he care for her? He thinks more at his age of old women like me.
He will be certain to kick against her, and destroy your plan, believe
me, Sir Austin."

"Ay? ay? do you think that?" said the baronet.

Lady Blandish gave him a multitude of reasons.

"Ay! true," he muttered. "Adrian said the same. He must not see her.
How could I think of it! The child is naked woman. He would despise her.
Naturally!"

"Naturally!" echoed the lady.

"Then, madam," and the baronet rose, "there is one thing for me to
determine upon. I must, for the first time in his life, leave him."

"Will you, indeed?" said the lady.

"It is my duty, having thus brought him up, to see that he is properly
mated,--not wrecked upon the quicksands of marriage, as a youth so
delicately trained might be; more easily than another! Betrothed, he
will be safe from a thousand snares. I may, I think, leave him for a
term. My precautions have saved him from the temptations of his season."

"And under whose charge will you leave him?" Lady Blandish inquired.

She had emerged from the temple, and stood beside Sir Austin on the
upper steps, under a clear summer twilight.

"Madam!" he took her hand, and his voice was gallant and tender, "under
whose but yours?"

As the baronet said this, he bent above her hand, and raised it to his
lips.

Lady Blandish felt that she had been wooed and asked in wedlock. She did
not withdraw her hand. The baronet's salute was flatteringly reverent.
He deliberated over it, as one going through a grave ceremony. And
he, the scorner of women, had chosen her for his homage! Lady Blandish
forgot that she had taken some trouble to arrive at it. She received the
exquisite compliment in all its unique honey-sweet: for in love we must
deserve nothing or the fine bloom of fruition is gone.

The lady's hand was still in durance, and the baronet had not recovered
from his profound inclination, when a noise from the neighbouring
beechwood startled the t