g bait
to the specious, artful, and worthless. You know how I have jested with
her about her soft melancholy, and lonely walks at morning before any one
is up, and in the moonlight when all should be gone to bed, or set down
to cards, which is the same thing. The incident which follows may not be
beyond the bounds of a joke, but I had rather the jest upon it came from
you than me.

'Two or three times during the last fortnight I heard, at a late hour in
the night or very early in the morning, a flageolet play the little Hindu
tune to which your daughter is so partial. I thought for some time that
some tuneful domestic, whose taste for music was laid under constraint
during the day, chose that silent hour to imitate the strains which he
had caught up by the ear during his attendance in the drawing-room. But
last night I sat late in my study, which is immediately under Miss
Mannering's apartment, and to my surprise I not only heard the flageolet
distinctly, but satisfied myself that it came from the lake under the
window. Curious to know who serenaded us at that unusual hour, I stole
softly to the window of my apartment. But there were other watchers than
me. You may remember, Miss Mannering preferred that apartment on account
of a balcony which opened from her window upon the lake. Well, sir, I
heard the sash of her window thrown up, the shutters opened, and her own
voice in conversation with some person who answered from below. This is
not "Much ado about nothing"; I could not be mistaken in her voice, and
such tones, so soft, so insinuating; and, to say the truth, the accents
from below were in passion's tenderest cadence too,--but of the sense I
can say nothing. I raised the sash of my own window that I might hear
something more than the mere murmur of this Spanish rendezvous; but,
though I used every precaution, the noise alarmed the speakers; down slid
the young lady's casement, and the shutters were barred in an instant.
The dash of a pair of oars in the water announced the retreat of the male
person of the dialogue. Indeed, I saw his boat, which he rowed with great
swiftness and dexterity, fly across the lake like a twelve-oared barge.
Next morning I examined some of my domestics, as if by accident, and I
found the gamekeeper, when making his rounds, had twice seen that boat
beneath the house, with a single person, and had heard the flageolet. I
did not care to press any farther questions, for fear of implicating