so. In appointing a morning's or an evening's walk, he proposed
_her_ going with the rest; no one had ever required her company before.
When he called and she was absent, he asked where she was; no one had
ever missed her before. She thanked him most sincerely, and soon
perceived that, at those times when he was present, company was more
pleasing even than books.

Her astonishment, her gratitude, did not stop here. Henry proceeded in
attention; he soon selected her from her sister to tell her the news of
the day, answered her observations the first; once gave her a sprig of
myrtle from his bosom in preference to another who had praised its
beauty; and once--never-to-be-forgotten kindness--sheltered her from a
hasty shower with his _parapluie_, while he lamented to her drenched
companions,

"That he had but _one_ to offer."

From a man whose understanding and person they admire, how dear, how
impressive on the female heart is every trait of tenderness! Till now,
Rebecca had experienced none; not even of the parental kind: and merely
from the overflowings of a kind nature (not in return for affection) had
she ever loved her father and her sisters. Sometimes, repulsed by their
severity, she transferred the fulness of an affectionate heart upon
birds, or the brute creation: but now, her alienated mind was recalled
and softened by a sensation that made her long to complain of the burthen
it imposed. Those obligations which exact silence are a heavy weight to
the grateful; and Rebecca longed to tell Henry "that even the forfeit of
her life would be too little to express the full sense she had of the
respect he paid to her." But as modesty forbade not only every kind of
declaration, but every insinuation purporting what she felt, she wept
through sleepless nights from a load of suppressed explanation; yet still
she would not have exchanged this trouble for all the beauty of her
sisters.

CHAPTER XXI.

Old John and Hannah Primrose, a prudent hardy couple, who, by many years
of peculiar labour and peculiar abstinence, were the least poor of all
the neighbouring cottagers, had an only child (who has been named before)
called Agnes: and this cottage girl was reckoned, in spite of the beauty
of the elder Miss Rymers, by far the prettiest female in the village.

Reader of superior rank, if the passions which rage in the bosom of the
inferior class of human kind are beneath your sympathy, throw aside this
littl