descent should be so
unpleasing to my father. His story is shortly told. He is of Scottish
extraction, but, being left an orphan, his education was undertaken by a
family of relations settled in Holland. He was bred to commerce, and sent
very early to one of our settlements in the East, where his guardian had
a correspondent. But this correspondent was dead when he arrived in
India, and he had no other resource than to offer himself as a clerk to a
counting-house. The breaking out of the war, and the straits to which we
were at first reduced, threw the army open to all young men who were
disposed to embrace that mode of life; and Brown, whose genius had a
strong military tendency, was the first to leave what might have been the
road to wealth, and to choose that of fame. The rest of his history is
well known to you; but conceive the irritation of my father, who despises
commerce (though, by the way, the best part of his property was made in
that honourable profession by my great-uncle), and has a particular
antipathy to the Dutch--think with what ear he would be likely to receive
proposals for his only child from Vanbeest Brown, educated for charity by
the house of Vanbeest and Vanbruggen! O, Matilda, it will never do; nay,
so childish am I, I hardly can help sympathising with his aristocratic
feelings. Mrs. Vanbeest Brown! The name has little to recommend it, to be
sure. What children we are!'

EIGHTH EXTRACT

'It is all over now, Matilda! I shall never have courage to tell my
father; nay, most deeply do I fear he has already learned my secret from
another quarter, which will entirely remove the grace of my
communication, and ruin whatever gleam of hope I had ventured to connect
with it. Yesternight Brown came as usual, and his flageolet on the lake
announced his approach. We had agreed that he should continue to use this
signal. These romantic lakes attract numerous visitors, who indulge their
enthusiasm in visiting the scenery at all hours, and we hoped that, if
Brown were noticed from the house, he might pass for one of those
admirers of nature, who was giving vent to his feelings through the
medium of music. The sounds might also be my apology, should I be
observed on the balcony. But last night, while I was eagerly enforcing my
plan of a full confession to my father, which he as earnestly deprecated,
we heard the window of Mr. Mervyn's library, which is under my room, open
softly. I signed to Brown to make his r