d only shew her to you!" said
he. "But why couldn't I? what's to prevent it? When you get to England
and see your friends, what difficulty would there be in coming down to
Hodley for a week or two? If you like riding, the Duke himself at Retton
Park has not two better bred ones in his stable than I have!" No need to
multiply his arguments and inducements: I agreed to go, not only to, but
actually with him--the frank good-nature of his character won on me at
every moment, and, long before we arrived at Calais, I had conceived for
him the strongest sentiments of affection.

From the moment he touched English ground his enthusiasm rose beyond
all bounds; delighted to be once back again in his own country, and
travelling the well-known road to his own home, he was elated like a
schoolboy. It was never an easy thing for me to resist the infectious
influence of any temperament near me, whether its mood was grave or gay,
and I became as excited and overjoyed as himself; and I suppose that two
exiles, returning from years of banishment, never gave themselves up to
greater transports than did we at every stage of our journey. I cannot
think of this without astonishment, for, in honest truth, I was all
my life attached to the Continent--from my earliest experience I had
preferred the habits and customs to our own, and yet, such was the easy
and unyielding compliance of my nature, that I actually fancied that my
Anglo-mania was as great as his own.

At last we reached Hodley, and drove up a fine, trimly-kept gravel
avenue, through several meadows, to a long comfortable-looking
farmhouse, at the door of which, in expectant delight, stood Amy
herself. In the oft-renewed embraces she gave her father I had time
to remark her well, and could see that she was a fine, blue-eyed,
fair-haired, handsome girl--a very flattering specimen of that good
Saxon stock we are so justly proud of; and if not all her father's
partiality deemed as regarded ladylike air and style, she was perfectly
free from any thing like pretension or any affectation whatever. This
was my first impression: subsequent acquaintance strengthened it. In
fact, the Brighton boarding-school had done no mischief to her; she had
not learned a great deal by her two years' residence, but she had not
brought back any toadying subserviency to the more nobly born, any
depreciating sense of her former companions, or any contempt for the
thatched farmhouse at Hodley and its honest ow