man feels--and I live at the very
door: his old trees, that ought to be mine, fling their shadows over my
little flower beds; the sixty chimneys of Huntercombe Hall look down on
my cottage; his acres of lawn run up to my little garden, and nothing
but a ha-ha between us."

"It _is_ hard," said Miss Bruce, composedly; not that she entered into
a hardship of this vulgar sort, but it was her nature to soothe and
please people.

"Hard!" cried Richard Bassett, encouraged by even this faint sympathy;
"it would be unendurable but for one thing--I shall have my own some
day."

"I am glad of that," said the lady; "but how?"

"By outliving the wrongful heir."

Miss Bruce turned pale. She had little experience of men's passions.
"Oh, Mr. Bassett!" said she--and there was something pure and holy in
the look of sorrow and alarm she cast on the presumptuous
speaker--"pray do not cherish such thoughts. They will do you harm. And
remember life and death are not in our hands. Besides--"

"Well?"'

"Sir Charles might--"

"Well?"

"Might he not--marry--and have children?" This with more hesitation and
a deeper blush than appeared absolutely necessary.

"Oh, there's no fear of that. Property ill-gotten never descends.
Charles is a worn-out rake. He was fast at Eton--fast at Oxford--fast
in London. Why, he looks ten years older than I, and he is three years
younger. He had a fit two years ago. Besides, he is not a marrying man.
Bassett and Huntercombe will be mine. And oh! Miss Bruce, if ever they
are mine--"

"Sir Charles Bassett!" trumpeted a servant at the door; and then
waited, prudently, to know whether his young lady, whom he had caught
blushing so red with one gentleman, would be at home to another.

"Wait a moment," said Miss Bruce to him. Then, discreetly ignoring what
Bassett had said last, and lowering her voice almost to a whisper, she
said, hurriedly: "You should not blame him for the faults of others.
There--I have not been long acquainted with either, and am little
entitled to inter--But it is such a pity you are not friends. He is
very good, I assure you, and very nice. Let me reconcile you two. _May_
I?"

This well-meant petition was uttered very sweetly; and, indeed--if I
may be permitted--in a way to dissolve a bear.

But this was not a bear, nor anything else that is placable; it was a
man with a hobby grievance; so he replied in character:

"That is impossible so long as he keeps me out of my own."