n his addresses, haunted by
that fear of a refusal already mentioned. Now, however, that Mrs.
Pendarrel felt some uneasiness lest Mildred should fall into other
chains, she became anxious to bind her at once in a positive
engagement.

The coxcomb was nearly a daily visitor at her house, and always
admitted. She took an early opportunity of sounding him more closely
than before as to his intentions, and hinted hopes of favour. He
replied with a proposal in form. Should esteem himself the happiest of
men. Feared he might not be acceptable to Miss Pendarrel. That alone
had prevented him from declaring himself long before. Sensible of his
unworthiness: prepared to devote his life. To which the mother
graciously answered, that she felt highly flattered. That her
daughter had been educated too prudently to differ from her parents.
He might consider the affair settled. No difficulty could arise in the
necessary arrangements. Mildred would be ready to receive him on the
following day.

CHAPTER XIV.

_Juliet._ Is there no pity sitting in the clouds,
That sees into the bottom of my grief?
O, sweet my mother, cast me not away!
Delay this marriage for a month--a week--
Or if you do not, make the bridal bed
In that dim monument where Tybalt lies.

_Lady Capulet._ Talk not to me, for I'll not speak a word:
Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee.

SHAKSPEARE.

Randolph had amply compensated, in his second dance with Mildred, for
any awkwardness which might have attended his first. Even in this he
had ultimately succeeded in interesting his partner, and in the other
he excited her enthusiasm. Carried away himself by the fatality which
seemed to have brought them together, he discoursed in fervent and
glowing language of the mystic science which supposed the destinies of
mortals to be written in the sky, and pointed to the planet which he
had just before imagined might rule his own. It was not as a believer,
not as a votary that he spoke, however, but as a lover. Were it not
pleasant, he asked, to fancy that friends far apart might look up to
those rolling fires, fancy one another's situation, and thus hold a
sympathetic communion,--no matter what distance lay between them? And
certain it is, that extravagant and romantic as the idea might seem,
Mildred never saw the stars afterwards without remembering the
question, gazing rou