y, with miraculous excuses
for all his shortcomings. She had been watching for his arrival many
hours before he appeared.

"Ulfar! how welcome you are!" she cried, with tears in her eyes and
her voice. "Oh, my dear! how happy I am to see you once more!"

She might have been his only love, he kissed and embraced and kissed
her again so fondly. Oh, wondrous tie of blood and kinship! At that
moment there really seemed to Ulfar Fenwick no one in the whole world
half so dear as his sister Elizabeth.

He told her he had lost his way in the storm and been detained by
Squire Anneys; and she praised the Squire, and said that she would
evermore love him for his kindness. "I met him once, at the Election
Ball in Kendal. He danced with me; 'we neighbour each other,' you
see; and they are a grand old family, I can tell you."

"There is a younger brother, called Brune."

"I never saw him."

"A sister also,--a child yet, but very handsome. You ought to see
her."

"Why?"

"You would like her. I do."

"Ulfar, there is a 'thus far' in everything. In your wooing and
pursuing, the line lies south of Seat-Ambar. To wrong a woman of that
house would be wicked and dangerous."

"Why should I wrong her? I have no intention to do so. I say she is a
lovely lady, a great beauty, worthy of honest love and supreme
devotion."

"Such a rant about love and beauty! Nine tenths of the men who talk in
this way do but blaspheme Love by taking his name in vain."

"However, Elizabeth, it is marriage or the Spanish colonies for me. It
is Miss Anneys, or Cuba, New Orleans, and Mexico. Santa Anna is a
supreme villain; I have a fancy to see such a specimen."

"You are then between the devil and the deep sea; and I should say
that the one-legged Spaniard was preferable to the deep sea of
matrimony."

"She is so fair! She has a virgin timidity that enchants me."

"It will become matronly indecision, or mental weakness of will. In
the future it will drive you frantic."

"Her sweet sensibility--"

"Will crystallize into passionate irritation or callous opposition.
These childlike, tender, clinging maidens are often capable of sudden
and dangerous action. Better go to Cuba, or even to Mexico, Ulfar."

"I suppose she has wealth. You will admit that excellence?"

"She is co-heir with her brothers. She may have two thousand pounds a
year. You cannot afford to marry a girl so poor."

"I have not yet come to regard a large sum of money as a kind