at least, at first-to think that
good now which one has always before been thinking abominable) Lord
Lieutenant of the county."

"Lord Mauleverer our Lord Lieutenant?"

"Yes, child; and since his lordship is such a friend of my brother, I
should think, considering especially what an old family in the county we
are,--not that I wish to intrude myself where I am not thought as fine
as the rest,--that he would be more attentive to us than Lord --------
was; but that, my dear Lucy, puts me in mind of Pillum; and so, perhaps,
you would like to walk to the parson's, as it is a fine evening. John
shall come for you at nine o'clock with (the moon is not up then) the
lantern."

Leaning on his daughter's willing arm, the good old man then rose and
walked homeward; and so soon as she had wheeled round his easy-chair,
placed the backgammon board on the table, and wished the old gentleman
an easy victory over his expected antagonist, the apothecary, Lucy tied
down her bonnet, and took her way to the rectory.

When she arrived at the clerical mansion and entered the drawing-room,
she was surprised to find the parson's wife, a good, homely, lethargic
old lady, run up to her, seemingly in a state of great nervous agitation
and crying,--

"Oh, my dear Miss Brandon! which way did you come? Did you meet nobody
by the road? Oh, I am so frightened! Such an accident to poor dear Dr.
Slopperton! Stopped in the king's highway, robbed of some tithe-money
he had just received from Farmer Slowforth! If it had not been for that
dear angel, good young man, God only knows whether I might not have been
a disconsolate widow by this time!"

While the affectionate matron was thus running on, Lucy's eye glancing
round the room discovered in an armchair the round and oily little
person of Dr. Slopperton, with a countenance from which all the
carnation hues, save in one circular excrescence on the nasal member,
that was left, like the last rose of summer, blooming alone, were faded
into an aspect of miserable pallor. The little man tried to conjure up
a smile while his wife was narrating his misfortune, and to mutter
forth some syllable of unconcern; but he looked, for all his bravado,
so exceedingly scared that Lucy would, despite herself, have laughed
outright, had not her eye rested upon the figure of a young man who had
been seated beside the reverend gentleman, but who had risen at Lucy's
entrance, and who now stood gazing upon her intently, bu