Gryll Grange

You begin by making passionate love to me, and all at once you turn round to one of my young friends, and say, "Zephyrs whisper how I love you."'

Lord Curryfin. Oh no! no, indeed. I have not said that, nor anything to the same effect.

Miss Gryll. Well, if you have not exactly said it, you have implied it. You have looked it. You have felt it. You cannot conceal it. You cannot deny it. I give you notice that, if I die for love of you, I shall haunt you.

Lord Curryfin. Ah! Miss Gryll, if you do not die till you die for love of me, you will be as immortal as Circe, whom you so divinely represented.

Miss Gryll. You offered yourself to me, to have and to hold, for ever and aye. Suppose I claim you. Do not look so frightened. You deserve some punishment, but that would be too severe. But, to a certain extent, you belong to me, and I claim the right to transfer you. I shall make a present of you to Miss Niphet.. So, according to the old rules of chivalry, I order you, as my captive by right, to present yourself before her, and tell her that you have come to receive her commands, and obey them to the letter. I expect she will keep you in chains for life. You do not look much alarmed at the prospect. Yet you must be aware that you are a great criminal; and you have not a word to say in your own justification.

Lord Curryfin. Who could be insensible to charms like yours, if hope could have mingled with the contemplation? But there were several causes by which hope seemed forbidden, and therefore——

Miss Gryll. And therefore when beauty, and hope, and sympathy shone under a more propitious star, you followed its guidance. You could not help yourself:

I shall flatter myself that I might have kept you if I had tried hard for it at first; but

No doubt you might have said with the old song,

But you scarcely gave me time to look on you before you were gone. You see, however, like our own Mirror of Knighthood, I make the best of my evil fate, and

Lord Curryfin. I am glad to see you so merry; for even if your heart were more deeply touched by another than it ever could have been by me, I think I may say of you, in your own manner,

I hope and I believe you will always trip joyously over the surface of the world. You are the personification of L'Allegro.

Miss Gryll. I do not know how that may be. But go now to the personification of La Penserosa. If you do not turn her into a brighter Allegro than I am, you may say I have no knowledge of woman's heart.

It was not long after this dialogue that Lord Curryfin found an opportunity of speaking to Miss Niphet alone. He said, 'I am charged with a duty, such as was sometimes imposed on knights in the old days of chivalry. A lady, who claims me as her captive by right, has ordered me to kneel at your feet, to obey your commands, and to wear your chains, if you please to impose them.'

Miss Niphet. To your kneeling I say, Rise; for your obedience, I have no commands; for chains, I have none to impose.

Lord Curryfin. You have imposed them, I wear them already, inextricably, indissolubly.

Miss Niphet. If I may say, with the witch in Thalaba,

I am prepared to unbind the bonds. Rise my lord, rise.

Lord Curryfin. I will rise if you give me your hand to lift me up.

Miss Niphet.. There it is. Now that it has helped you up, let it go.

Lord Curryfin. And do not call me my lord.

Miss Niphet. What shall I call you?

Lord Curryfin. Call me Richard, and let me call you Alice.

Miss Niphet.. That is a familiarity only sanctioned by longer intimacy than ours has been.

Lord Curryfin. Or closer?

Miss Niphet. We have been very familiar friends during the brief term of our acquaintance. But let go my hand.

Lord Curryfin, I have set my heart on being allowed to call you Alice, and on your calling me Richard.

Miss Niphet. It must not be so—at least, not yet.

Lord Curryfin. There is nothing I would not do to acquire the right.

Miss Niphet. Nothing?

Lord Curryfin. Nothing.

Miss Niphet. How thrives your suit with Miss Gryll?

Lord Curryfin. That is at an end. I have her permission—her command she calls it—to throw myself at your feet, and on your mercy.

Miss Niphet. How did she take leave of you, crying or laughing?

Lord Curryfin. Why, if anything, laughing.

Miss Niphet.. Do you not feel mortified?

Lord Curryfin. I have another and deeper feeling, which predominates over any possible mortification.

Miss Niphet. And that is—

Lord Curryfin. Can you doubt what it is!

Miss Niphet.. I will not pretend to doubt. I have for some time been well aware of your partiality for me.

Lord Curryfin. Partiality! Say love, adoration, absorption of all feelings into one.

Miss Niphet.. Then you may call me Alice. But once more, let go my hand.

Lord Curryfin. My hand, is it not?

Miss Niphet.. Yours, when you claim it.

Lord Curryfin. Then thus I seal my claim.

He kissed her hand as respectfully as was consistent with 'masterless passion'; and she said to him, 'I will not dissemble. If I have had one wish stronger than another—strong enough to exclude all others—it has been for the day when you might be free to say to me what you have now said. Am I too frank with you?'

Lord Curryfin. Oh, heaven, no! I drink in your words as a stream from paradise.

He sealed his claim again, but this time it was on her lips. The rose again mantled on her cheek, but the blush was heightened to damask. She withdrew herself from his arms, saying, 'Once for all, till you have an indisputable right.'

CHAPTER XXXI

A TWELFTH-NIGHT BALL—PANTOPRAGMATIC COOKERY—MODERN VANDALISM—A BOWL OF PUNCH

Twelfth-night was the night of the ball. The folding-doors of the drawing-rooms, which occupied their entire breadth, were thrown wide open. The larger room was appropriated to grown dancers; the smaller to children, who came in some force, and were placed within the magnetic attraction of an enormous twelfth-cake, which stood in a decorated recess. The carpets had been taken up, and the floors were painted with forms in chalk{1} by skilful artists, under the superintendence of Mr. Pallet. The library, separated from all the apartments by ante-chambers with double doors, was assigned, with an arrangement of whist-tables, to such of the elder portion of the party as might prefer that mode of amusement to being mere spectators of the dancing. Mr. Gryll, with Miss Ilex, Mr. MacBorrowdale, and the Reverend Dr. Opimian, established his own quadrille party in a corner of the smaller drawing-room, where they could at once play and talk, and enjoy the enjoyment of the young. Lord Curryfin was Master of the Ceremonies.

After two or three preliminary dances, to give time for the arrival of the whole of the company, the twelfth-cake was divided. The characters were drawn exclusively among the children, and the little king and queen were duly crowned, placed on a theatrical throne, and paraded in state round both drawing-rooms, to their own great delight and that of their little associates. Then the ball was supposed to commence, and was by general desire opened with a minuet by Miss Niphet and Lord Curryfin. Then came alternations of quadrilles and country dances, interspersed with occasional waltzes and polkas. So the ball went merrily, with, as usual, abundant love-making in mute signs and in sotto voce parlance.

Lord Curryfin, having brought his own love-making to a satisfactory close, was in exuberant spirits, sometimes joining in the dance, sometimes—in his official capacity—taking the round of the rooms to see that everything was going on to everybody's satisfaction. He could not fail to observe that his proffered partnership in the dance, though always graciously, was not so ambitiously accepted as before he had disposed of himself for life. A day had sufficed to ask and obtain the consent of Miss Niphet's father, who now sate on the side of the larger drawing-room, looking with pride and delight on his daughter, and with cordial gratification on her choice; and when it was once, as it was at once known, that Miss Niphet was to be Lady Curryfin, his lordship passed into the class of married men, and was no longer the object of that solicitous attention which he had received as an undrawn prize in the lottery of marriage, while it was probable that somebody would have him, and nobody knew who.

The absence of Mr. Falconer was remarked by several young ladies, to whom it appeared that Miss Gryll had lost her two most favoured lovers at once. However, as she had still many others, it was not yet a decided case for sympathy. Of course she had no lack of partners, and whatever might have been her internal anxiety, she was not the least gay among the joyous assembly.

Lord Curryfin, in his circuit of the apartments, paused at the quadrille-table, and said, 'You have been absent two or three days, Mr. MacBorrowdale—what news have you brought from London?'

Mr. MacBorrowdale. Not much, my lord. Tables turn as usual, and the ghost-trade appears to be thriving instead of being merely audible, the ghosts are becoming tangible, and shake hands under the tables with living wiseacres, who solemnly attest the fact. Civilised men ill-use their wives; the wives revenge themselves in their own way, and the Divorce Court has business enough on its hands to employ it twenty years at its present rate of progression. Commercial bubbles burst, and high-pressure boilers blow up, and mountebanks of all descriptions flourish on public credulity. Everywhere there are wars and rumours of wars. The Peace Society has wound up its affairs in the Insolvent Court of Prophecy. A great tribulation is coming on the earth, and Apollyon in person is to be perpetual dictator all the nations. There is, to be sure, one piece of news your line, but it will be no news to you. There is a meeting of the Pantopragmatic Society, under the presidency of Lord Facing-both-ways, who has opened it with a long speech, philanthropically designed as an elaborate exercise in fallacies, for the benefit of young rhetoricians. The society has divided its work into departments, which are to meddle with everything, from the highest to the lowest—from a voice in legislation to a finger in Jack Horner's pie. I looked for a department of Fish, with your lordship's name at the head of it; but I did not find it. It would be a fine department. It would divide itself naturally into three classes—living fish, fossil fish, and fish in the frying-pan.

Lord Curryfin. I assure you, Mr. MacBorrowdale, all this seems as ridiculous now to me as it does to you. The third class of fish is all that I shall trouble myself with in future, and that only at the tables of myself and my friends.

Mr. Gryll. I wonder the Pantopragmatics have not a department of cookery; a female department, to teach young wives how to keep their husbands at home, by giving them as good dinners as they can get abroad, especially at club. Those anti-domestic institutions receive their chief encouragment from the total ignorance of cookery on the part of young wives: for in this, as in all other arts of life, it is not sufficient to order what shall be done: it is necessary to know how it ought to be done. This is a matter of more importance to social well-being than nine-tenths of the subjects the Pantopragmatics meddle with.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. And therefore I rejoice that they do not meddle with it. A dinner, prepared from a New Art of Cookery, concocted under their auspices, would be more comical and more uneatable than the Roman dinner in Peregrine Pickle. Let young ladies learn cookery by all means: but let them learn under any other tuition than that of the Pantopragmatic Society.

Mr. Gryll. As for the tribulation coming on the earth, I am afraid there is some ground to expect it, without looking for its foreshadowing exclusively to the Apocalypse. Niebuhr, who did not draw his opinions from prophecy, rejoiced that his career was coming to a close, for he thought we were on the eve of a darker middle age.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. He had not before his eyes the astounding march of intellect, drumming and trumpeting science from city to city. But I am afraid that sort of obstreperous science only gives people the novel 'use of their eyes to see the way of blindness.'{1}

I am not likely to find in the successive gabblings of a dozen lecturers of Babel.

Mr. Gryll. If you could so find them, they would be of little avail against the new irruption of Goths and Vandals, which must have been in the apprehension of Niebuhr. There are Vandals on northern thrones, anxious for nothing so much as to extinguish truth and liberty wherever they show themselves—Vandals in the bosom of society everywhere even amongst ourselves, in multitudes, with precisely the same aim, only more disguised by knaves, and less understood by dupes.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. And, you may add, Vandals dominating over society throughout half America, who deal with free speech and even the suspicion of free thought just as the Inquisition dealt with them, only substituting Lynch law and the gallows for a different mockery of justice, ending in fire and faggot.

Mr. Gryll. I confine my view to Europe. I dread northern monarchy, and southern anarchy; and rabble brutality amongst ourselves, smothered and repressed for the present, but always ready to break out into inextinguishable flame, like hidden fire under treacherous ashes.{1}

Mr. MacBorrowdale. In the meantime, we are all pretty comfortable; and sufficient for the day is the evil thereof; which in our case, so far as I can see, happens to be precisely none.

Miss Ilex. Lord Curryfin seems to be of that opinion, for he has flitted away from the discussion, and is going down a country dance with Miss Niphet..

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. He has chosen his time well. He takes care to be her last partner before supper, that he may hand her to the table. But do you observe how her tragic severity has passed away? She was always pleasant to look on, but it was often like contemplating ideal beauty in an animated statue—Now she is the image of perfect happiness, and irradiates all around her.

Miss Ilex. How can it be otherwise? The present and the future are all brightness to her. She cannot but reflect their radiance.

Now came the supper, which, as all present had dined early, was unaffectedly welcomed and enjoyed. Lord Curryfin looked carefully to the comfort of his idol, but was unremitting in his attentions to her fair neighbours. After supper, dancing was resumed, with an apparent resolution in the greater portion of the company not to go home till morning. Mr. Gryll, Mr. MacBorrowdale, the Reverend Doctor Opimian, and two or three elders of the party, not having had their usual allowance of wine after their early dinner, remained at the supper table over a bowl of punch, which had been provided in ample quantity, and, in the intervals of dancing, circulated, amongst other refreshments, round the sides of the ballroom, where it was gratefully accepted by the gentlemen, and not absolutely disregarded even by the young ladies. This may be conceded on occasion, without admitting Goldoni's facetious position, that a woman, masked and silent, may be known to be English by her acceptance of punch.{1}

CHAPTER XXXII

HOPES AND FEARS—COMPENSATIONS IN LIFE—ATHENIAN COMEDY—MADEIRA AND MUSIC—CONFIDENCES

Dorothy had begun to hope that Harry's news might be true, but even Harry's sanguineness began to give way: the pertinacity with which the young master remained at home threw a damp on their expectations. But having once fairly started, in the way of making love on the one side and responding to it on the other, they could not but continue as they had begun, and she permitted him to go on building castles in the air, in which the Christmas of the ensuing year was arrayed in the brightest apparel of fire and festival.

Harry, walking home one afternoon, met the Reverend Doctor Opimian, who was on his way to the Tower, where he purposed to dine and pass the night. Mr. Falconer's absence from the ball had surprised him, especially as Lord Curryfin's rivalry had ceased, and he could imagine no good cause for his not returning to the Grange. The doctor held out his hand to Harry, who returned the grasp most cordially. The doctor asked him, 'how he and his six young friends were prospering in their siege of the hearts of the seven sisters.'

Harry Hedgerow. Why, sir, so far as the young ladies are concerned, we have no cause to complain. But we can't make out the young gentleman. He used to sit and read all the morning, at the top of the Tower. Now he goes up the stairs, and after a little while he comes down again, and walks into the forest. Then he goes upstairs again, and down again, and out again. Something must be come to him, and the only thing we can think of is, that he is crossed in love. And he never gives me a letter or a message to the Grange. So, putting all that together, we haven't a merry Christmas, you see, sir.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I see, still harping on a merry Christmas. Let us hope that the next may make amends.

Harry Hedgerow. Have they a merry Christmas at the Grange, sir?

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Very merry.

Harry Hedgerow. Then there's nobody crossed in love there, sir.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. That is more than I can say. I cannot answer for others. I am not, and never was, if that is any comfort to you.

Harry Hedgerow. It is a comfort to me to see you, and hear the sound of your voice, sir. It always does me good.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Why then, my young friend, you are most heartily welcome to see and hear me whenever you please, if you will come over to the Vicarage. And you will always find a piece of cold roast beef and a tankard of good ale; and just now a shield of brawn. There is some comfort in them.

Harry Hedgerow. Ah! thank ye, sir. They are comfortable things in their way. But it isn't for them I should come.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I believe you, my young friend. But a man fights best when he has a good basis of old English fare to stand on, against all opposing forces, whether of body or mind. Come and see me. And whatever happens in this world, never let it spoil your dinner.

Harry Hedgerow. That's father's advice, sir. But it won't always do. When he lost mother, that spoiled his dinner for many a day. He has never been the same man since, though he bears up as well as he can. But if I could take Miss Dorothy home to him, I'm sure that would all but make him young again. And if he had a little Harry dandle next Christmas, wouldn't he give him the first spoonful out of the marrow-bone!

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I doubt if that would be good food for little Harry, notwithstanding it was Hector's way of feeding Astyanax.{1} But we may postpone the discussion of his diet till he makes his appearance. In the meantime, live in hope; but live on beef and ale.

The doctor again shook him heartily by the hand, an Harry took his leave.

The doctor walked on, soliloquising as usual. 'This young man's father has lost a good wife, and has never been the same man since. If he had had a bad wife, he would have felt it as a happy release. This life has strange compensations. It helps to show the truth of Juvenal's remark, that the gods alone know what is good for us.{2}

Now, here again is my friend at the Tower. If he had not, as I am sure he has, the love of Morgana, he would console himself with his Vestals. If he had not their sisterly affection, he would rejoice in the love of Morgana, but having both the love and the affection, he is between two counter-attractions, either of which would make him happy, and both together make him miserable. Who can say which is best for him? or for them? or for Morgana herself? I almost wish the light of her favour had shone on Lord Curryfin. That chance has pass from her; and she will not easily find such another. Perhaps she might have held him in her bonds, if she had been so disposed. But Miss Niphet. is a glorious girl, and there is a great charm in such perfect reciprocity. Jupiter himself, as I have before had occasion to remark, must have prearranged their consentaneity. The young lord went on some time, adhering, as he supposed, to his first pursuit, and falling unconsciously and inextricably into the second; and the young lady went on, devoting her whole heart and soul to him, not clearly perhaps knowing it herself, but certainly not suspecting that any one else could dive into the heart of her mystery. And now they both seem surprised that nobody seems surprised at their sudden appearance in the character affianced lovers. His is another example of strange compensation; for if Morgana had accepted him on his first offer, Miss Niphet would not have thought of him; but she found him a waif and stray, a flotsam on the waters of love, and landed him at her feet without art or stratagem. Artlessness and simplicity triumphed, where the deepest design would have failed. I do not know if she had any compensation to look for; but if she had, she has found it; for never was a man with more qualities for domestic happiness, and not Pedro of Portugal himself was more overwhelmingly in love. When I first knew him, I saw only the comic side of his character: he has a serious one too, and not the least agreeable part of it: but the comic still shows itself. I cannot well define whether his exuberant good-humour is contagious, and makes me laugh by anticipation as soon as I fall into his company, or whether it is impossible to think of him, gravely lecturing on Fish, as a member of the Pantopragmatic Society, without perceiving a ludicrous contrast between his pleasant social face and the unpleasant social impertinence of those would-be meddlers with everything. It is true, he has renounced that folly; but it is not so easy to dissociate him from the recollection. No matter: if I laugh, he laughs with me: if he laughs, I laugh with him. "Laugh when you can," is a good maxim: between well-disposed sympathies a very little cause strikes out the fire of merriment—

Very good doctrine, and fit to be kept in mind: but there is much good laughter without much wisdom, and yet with no harm in it.'

The doctor was approaching the Tower when he met Mr. Falconer, who had made one of his feverish exits from it, and was walking at double his usual speed. He turned back with the doctor, who having declined taking anything before dinner but a glass of wine and a biscuit, they went up together to the library.

They conversed only on literary subjects. The doctor, though Miss Gryll was uppermost in his mind, determined not to originate a word respecting her, and Mr. Falconer, though she was also his predominant idea, felt that it was only over a bottle of Madeira he could unbosom himself freely to the doctor.

The doctor asked, 'What he had been reading of late? He said, 'I have tried many things, but I have alway returned to Orlando Innamorato. There it is on the table an old edition of the original poem.{1} The doctor said, I have seen an old edition, something like this, on the drawing-room table at the Grange.' He was about to say something touching sympathy in taste, but he checked himself in time. The two younger sisters brought in lights. 'I observe,' said the doctor, 'that your handmaids always move in pairs. My hot water for dressing is always brought by two inseparables, whom it seems profanation to call housemaids.'

Mr. Falconer. It is always so on my side of the house that not a breath of scandal may touch their reputation. If you were to live here from January to December, with a houseful of company, neither you nor I, nor any of my friends, would see one of them alone for a single minute.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I approve the rule. I would stake my life on the conviction that these sisters are

But as the world is constituted, the most perfect virtue needs to be guarded from suspicion. I cannot, however, associate your habits with a houseful of company.

Mr. Falconer. There must be sympathies enough in the world to make up society for all tastes: more difficult to find in some cases than in others; but still always within the possibility of being found. I contemplated, when I arranged this house, the frequent presence of a select party. The Aristophanic comedy and its adjuncts brought me into pleasant company elsewhere. I have postponed the purpose, not abandoned it.

Several thoughts passed through the doctor's mind. He was almost tempted to speak them. 'How beautiful was Miss Gryll in Circe; how charmingly she acted. What was a select party without women? And how could a bachelor invite them?' But this would be touching a string which he had determined not to be the first to strike. So, apropos of the Aristophanic comedy, he took down Aristophanes, and said, 'What a high idea of Athenian comedy is given by this single line, in which the poet opines "the bringing out of comedy to be the most difficult of all arts."'{1} It would not seem to be a difficult art nowadays, seeing how much new comedy is nightly produced in London, and still more in Paris, which, whatever may be its literary value, amuses its audiences as much as Aristophanes amused the Athenians.

Mr. Falconer. There is this difference, that though both audiences may be equally amused, the Athenians felt they had something to be proud of in the poet, which our audiences can scarcely feel, as far as novelties are concerned. And as to the atrocious outrages on taste and feeling perpetrated under the name of burlesques, I should be astonished if even those who laugh at them could look back on their amusement with any other feeling than that of being most heartily ashamed of the author, the theatre, and themselves.

When the dinner was over, and a bottle of claret had been placed by the side of the doctor, and a bottle of Madeira by the side of his host, who had not been sparing during dinner of his favourite beverage, which had been to him for some days like ale to the Captain and his friends in Beaumont and Fletcher,{2} almost 'his eating and his drinking solely,' the doctor said, 'I am glad to perceive that you keep up your practice of having a good dinner; though I am at the same time sorry to see that you have not done your old justice to it.'

Mr. Falconer. A great philosopher had seven friends, one of whom dined with him in succession on each day of the week. He directed, amongst his last dispositions, that during six months after his death the establishment of his house should be kept on the same footing, and that a dinner should be daily provided for himself and his single guest of the day, who was to be entreated to dine there in memory of him, with one of his executors (both philosophers) to represent him in doing the honours of the table alternately.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I am happy to see that the honours of your table are done by yourself, and not by an executor, administrator, or assign. The honours are done admirably, but the old justice on your side is wanting. I do not, however, clearly see what the feralis cæna of guest and executor has to do with the dinner of two living men.

Mr. Falconer. Ah, doctor, you should say one living man and a ghost. I am only the ghost of myself. I do the honours of my departed conviviality.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I thought something was wrong; but whatever it may be, take Horace's advice—'Alleviate every ill with wine and song, the sweet consolations of deforming anxiety.'{1}

Mr. Falconer. I do, doctor. Madeira, and the music of the Seven Sisters, are my consolations, and great ones; but they do not go down to the hidden care that gnaws at the deepest fibres of the heart, like Ratatosk at the roots of the Ash of Ygdrasil.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. In the Scandinavian mythology: one of the most poetical of all mythologies. I have a great respect for Odin and Thor. Their adventures have always delighted me; and the system was admirably adapted to foster the high spirit of a military people. Lucan has a fine passage on the subject.{2}

The doctor repeated the passage of Lucan with great emphasis. This was not what Mr. Falconer wanted. He had wished that the doctor should inquire into the cause of his trouble; but independently of the doctor's determination to ask no questions, and to let his young friend originate his own disclosures, the unlucky metaphor had carried the doctor into one of his old fields, and if it had not been that he awaited the confidence, which he felt sure his host would spontaneously repose in him, the Scandinavian mythology would have formed his subject for the evening. He paused, therefore, and went on quietly sipping his claret.

Mr. Falconer could restrain himself no longer, and without preface or note of preparation, he communicated to the doctor all that had passed between Miss Gryll and himself, not omitting a single word of the passages of Bojardo, which were indelibly impressed on his memory.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I cannot see what there is to afflict you in all this. You are in love with Miss Gryll. She is disposed to receive you favourably. What more would you wish in that quarter?

Mr. Falconer. No more in that quarter, but the Seven Sisters are as sisters to me. If I had seven real sisters, the relationship would subsist, and marriage would not interfere with it; but, be a woman as amiable, as liberal, as indulgent, as confiding as she may, she could not treat the unreal as she would the real tie.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I admit, it is not to be expected. Still there is one way out of the difficulty. And that is by seeing all the seven happily married.

Mr. Falconer. All the seven married? Surely that is impossible.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Not so impossible as you apprehend.

The doctor thought it a favourable opportunity to tell the story of the seven suitors, and was especially panegyrical on Harry Hedgerow, observing, that if the maxim Noscitur a sociis might be reversed, and a man's companions judged by himself, it would be a sufficient recommendation of the other six; whom, moreover, the result of his inquiries had given him ample reason to think well of. Mr. Falconer received with pleasure at Christmas a communication which at the Midsummer preceding would have given him infinite pain. It struck him all at once that, as he had dined so ill, he would have some partridges for supper, his larder being always well stocked with game. They were presented accordingly, after the usual music in the drawing-room, and the doctor, though he had dined well, considered himself bound in courtesy to assist in their disposal; when, recollecting how he had wound, up the night of the ball, he volunteered to brew a bowl of punch, over which they sate till a late hour, discoursing of many things, but chiefly of Morgana.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE CONQUEST OF THEBES

Mr. Falconer, the next morning, after the doctor had set out on his return walk, departed from his usual practice of not seeing one of the sisters alone, and requested that Dorothy would come to him in the drawing-room. She appeared before him, blushing and trembling.

'Sit down,' he said, 'dear Dorothy; I have something to say to you and your sisters; but I have reasons for saying it first to you. It is probable, at any rate possible, that I shall very soon marry, and perhaps, in that case, you may be disposed to do the same. And I am told, that one of the best young men I have ever known is dying for love of you.'

'He is a good young man, that is certain,' said Dorothy; then becoming suddenly conscious of how much she had undesignedly admitted, she blushed deeper than before. And by way of mending the matter, she said, 'But I am not dying for love of him.'

'I daresay you are not,' said Mr. Falconer; 'you have no cause to be so, as you are sure of him, and only your consent is wanting.'

'And yours,' said Dorothy, 'and that of my sisters; especially my elder sisters; indeed, they ought to set the example.'

'I am sure of that,' said Mr. Falconer. 'So far, if I understand rightly, they have followed yours. It was your lover's indefatigable devotion that brought together suitors to them all. As to my consent, that you shall certainly have. So the next time you see Master Harry, send him to me.'

'He is here now,' said Dorothy.

'Then ask him to come in,' said Mr. Falconer.

And Dorothy retired in some confusion. But her lips could not contradict her heart. Harry appeared.

Mr. Falconer. So, Harry, you have been making love in my house, without asking my leave.

Harry Hedgerow. I couldn't help making love, sir; and I didn't ask your leave, because I thought I shouldn't get it.

Mr. Falconer. Candid, as usual, Harry. But do you think Dorothy would make a good farmer's wife?

Harry Hedgerow. I think, sir, she is so good, and so clever, and so ready and willing to turn her hand to anything, that she would be a fit wife for anybody, from a lord downwards. But it may be most for her own happiness to keep in the class in which she was born.

Mr. Falconer. She is not very pretty, you know.

Harry Hedgerow. Not pretty, sir! If she isn't a beauty, I don't know who is.

Mr. Falconer. Well, no doubt, she is a handsome girl.

Harry Hedgerow. Handsome is not the thing, sir. She's beautiful.

Mr. Falconer. Well, Harry, she is beautiful, if that will please you.

Harry Hedgerow. It does please me, sir. I ought to have known you were joking when you said she was not pretty.

Mr. Falconer. But, you know, she has no fortune.

Harry Hedgerow. I don't want fortune. I want her, and nothing else, and nobody else.

Mr. Falconer. But I cannot consent to her marrying without a fortune of her own.

Harry Hedgerow. Why then, I'll give her one beforehand. Father has saved some money, and she shall have that. We'll settle it on her, as the lawyers say.

Mr. Falconer. You are a thoroughly good fellow, Harry, and I really wish Dorothy joy of her choice; but that is not what I meant. She must bring you a fortune, not take one from you; and you must not refuse it.

Harry repeated that he did not want fortune; and Mr. Falconer repeated that, so far as depended on him, he should not have Dorothy without one. It was not an arduous matter to bring to an amicable settlement.

The affair of Harry and Dorothy being thus satisfactorily arranged, the other six were adjusted with little difficulty; and Mr. Falconer returned with a light heart to the Grange, where he presented himself at dinner on the twenty-seventh day of his probation.

He found much the same party as before; for though some of them absented themselves for a while, they could not resist Mr. Gryll's earnest entreaties to return. He was cordially welcomed by all, and with a gracious smile from Morgana.