their commendations and compliments for some minutes with
much grimace of disavowal and diffidence, the stranger's modesty seemed
at last to take pain at the excess of their gratitude; and accordingly,
pointing to the clock, which was within a few minutes to nine, he
said,--

"I fear, my respected host and my admired hostess, that I must now leave
you; I have far to go."

"But are you yourself not afraid of the highwaymen?" cried Mrs.
Slopperton, interrupting him.

"The highwaymen!" said the stranger, smiling; "no; I do not fear them;
besides, I have little about me worth robbing."

"Do you superintend your property yourself?" said the doctor, who farmed
his own glebe and who, unwilling to part with so charming a guest,
seized him now by the button.

"Superintend it myself! why, not exactly. There is a bailiff, whose
views of things don't agree with mine, and who now and then gives me a
good deal of trouble."

"Then why don't you discharge him altogether?"

"Ah! I wish I could; but 't is a necessary evil. We landed proprietors,
my dear sir, must always be plagued with some thing of the sort. For my
part, I have found those cursed bailiffs would take away, if they
could, all the little property one has been trying to accumulate. But,"
abruptly changing his manner into one of great softness, "could I not
proffer my services and my companionship to this young lady? Would she
allow me to conduct her home, and indeed stamp this day upon my memory
as one of the few delightful ones I have ever known?"

"Thank you, dear sir," said Mrs. Slopperton, answering at once for Lucy;
"it is very considerate of you.--And I am sure, my love, I could
not think of letting you go home alone with old John, after such an
adventure to the poor dear doctor."

Lucy began an excuse which the good lady would not hear. But as the
servant whom Mr. Brandon was to send with a lantern to attend his
daughter home had not arrived, and as Mrs. Slopperton, despite her
prepossessions in favour of her husband's deliverer, did not for a
moment contemplate his accompanying, without any other attendance, her
young friend across the fields at that unseasonable hour, the stranger
was forced, for the present, to re-assume his seat. An open harpsichord
at one end of the room gave him an opportunity to make some remark
upon music; and this introducing an eulogium on Lucy's voice from Mrs.
Slopperton, necessarily ended in a request to Miss Brandon to indul