mother's counsels; and that silly, cheated woman
playfully would lean upon his arm, like a huge, coy confidante, and fill
his greedy ears (that heard her gladly for very holiday's sake from
fearful apprehensions), with lover's hopes, lover's themes, his Emily's
perfection. Delighted mother--how proud and pleased was she! quite in
her own element, fanning dear Julian's most sentimental flame, and
scheming for him interviews with Emily.

It required all her skill--for the girl clung closely to her guardian:
he, unconscious Argus, never tired of her company; and she, remembering
dear Charles's hint, and dreading to be left alone with Julian, would
persist to sit day after day at her books, music, or needle-work in the
study, charming General Tracy by her pretty Hindoo songs. With him she
walked out, and with him she came in; she would read to him for hours,
whether he snored or listened; and, really, both mother and son were
several long weeks before their scheming could come to any thing. A
_tete-a-tete_ between Julian and Emily appeared as impossible to manage,
as collision between Jupiter and Vesta.

However, after some six weeks of this sort of mining and counter-mining
(for Emily divined their wishes), all on a sudden one morning the
general received a letter that demanded his immediate presence for a day
or two in town; something about prize-money at Puttymuddyfudgepoor.
Emily was too high-spirited, too delicate in mind, to tell her guardian
of fears which never might be realized; and so, with some forebodings,
but a cheerful trust, too, in a Providence above her, she saw the
general off without a word, though not without a tear; he too, that
stern, close man, was moved: it was strange to see them love each other
so.

The moment he was gone, she discreetly kept her chamber for the day, on
plea of sickness; she had cried very heartily to see him leave her--he
had never yet left her once since she could recollect--and thus she
really had a head-ache, and a bad one.

Julian Tracy gave such a start, that he knocked off a cheffonier of
rare china and glass standing at his elbow; and the smash of mandarins
and porcelain gods would have been enough, at any other time, to have
driven his mother crazy.

"Charles alive?" shouted he.

"Yes, Julian--why not? You saw him off, you know: cannot you remember?"

Now to that guilty wretch's mind the fearful notion instantaneously
occurred, that Emily Warren was in some strange