please," said she; "only remember I am not responsible
for the consequences. I have always told you what a wretched thing a
love-marriage is, therefore you are not to blame me for your future
misery."

Mary readily subscribed to the conditions; but, as she embraced her
mother at parting, she timidly whispered a hope that she would ever
consider her house as her home. A smile of contempt was the only reply
she received, and they parted never more to meet. Lady Juliana found
foreign manners and principles too congenial to her tastes ever to return
to Britain.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

"O most gentle Jupiter! what tedious homily of love have
you wearied your parishioners withal, and never cried,
_Have patience, good people!"_

_As You Like it._

THE only obstacle to her union thus removed, Mary thought she might now
venture to let her Aunt Grizzy into the secret; and accordingly, with
some little embarrassment, she made the disclosure of the mutual
attachment subsisting between Colonel Lennox and herself. Grizzy
received the communication with all the astonishment which ladies
usually experience upon being made acquainted with a marriage which they
had not had the prescience to foresee and foretell--or even one which
they had; for, common and natural as the event seems to be, it is one
which perhaps in no instance ever took place without occasioning the
greatest amazement to some one individual or another; and it will also
be generally found that either the good or the bad fortune of one or
other of the parties is the subject of universal wonder. In short, a
marriage which excites no surprise, pity, or indignation, must be
something that has never yet been witnessed on the face of this round
world. It is greatly to be feared none of my readers will sympathise in
the feelings of the good spinster on this occasion, as she poured them
forth in the following _extempore_ or _improvisatorial_ strain:-

"Well, Mary, I declare I'm perfectly confounded with all you have been
telling me! I'm sure I never heard the like of it! It seems but the
t'other day since you began your sampler; and it looks just
like yesterday since your father and mother were married. And such a work
as there was at your nursing! I'm sure your poor grandfather was out of
all patience about it. And now to think that you are going to be
married! not but what it's a thing we all expected, for there's no doubt
England's the place for young women t