"All! But you, Miss Dodd? with whom I
have taken this unwarrantable liberty?" said
Hardie, imploringly.

"Me, Mr. Hardie? you do me the honour to
require my opinion of your performances;
including of course this self-introduction?"

Hardie hung his head; there was a touch of
satire in the lady's voice, he thought.

Her soft eyes rested demurely on him a
moment; she saw he was a little abashed.

"My opinion of it all is that you have been
very kind to us; in being most kind to our poor
Edward. I never saw, nor read of anything
more generous, more manly. And then so thoughtful,
so considerate, so delicate! so instead of
criticising you, as you seem to expect, his sister
only blesses you, and thanks you from the very
bottom of her heart."

She had begun with a polite composure,
borrowed from mamma; but, once launched, her
ardent nature got the better: her colour rose and
rose, and her voice sank and sank, and the last
words came almost in a whisper, and such a lovely
whisper; a gurgle from the heart: and, as she
concluded, her delicate hand came sweeping out with
a heaven-taught gesture of large and sovereign
cordiality, that made even the honest words and
the divine tones more eloquent. It was too
much: the young man, ardent as herself, and
not, in reality, half so timorous, caught fire; and
seeing a white, eloquent hand rather near him,
caught it, and pressed his warm lips on it in mute
adoration and gratitude.

At this she was scared and offended. " Oh!
keep that for the Queen!" cried she, turning
scarlet, and tossing her fair head into the air,
like a startled stag, and she drew her hand
away quickly and decidedly, though not roughly.
He stammered a lowly apology; in the very
middle of it she said, softly, " Good-by, Mr.
Hardie," and swept, with a gracious little
curtsey, through the doorway, leaving him
spellbound.

And so the virginal instinct of self-defence
carried her off swiftly and cleverly. But none
too soon; for, on entering the house, that
exterrnal composure, her two mothers, Mesdames
Dodd and Nature, had taught her, fell from her
like a veil, and she fluttered up the stairs to her
own room, with hot cheeks, and panted there
like some wild thing that has been grasped at
and grazed. She felt young Hardie's lips upon
the palm of her hand plainly; they seemed to
linger there still; it was like light but live
velvet. This, and the ardent look he had poured
into her eyes, set the young creature quivering.
Nobody had looked at her so before, and no
young gentleman had imprinted living velvet on
her hand. She was alarmed, ashamed, and
uneasy. What right had he to look at her like that?
What shadow of a right to go and kiss her hand?
He could not pretend to think she had put it out
to be kissed; ladies put forth the back of the
hand for that, not the palm. The truth was he
was an impudent fellow, and she hated him now,
and herself too, for being so simple as to let him
talk to her; mamma would not have been so
imprudent when she was a girl.

She would not go down, for she felt there
must be something of this kind legibly branded
on her face: " O! O! just look at this young
lady! She has been letting a young gentleman
kiss the palm of her hand; and the feel has
not gone off yet: you may see that by her
cheeks."

But, then, poor Edward! she must go down.

So she put a wet towel to her tell-tale cheeks,
and dried them by artistic dabs, avoiding friction,
and came down stairs like a mouse, and
turned the door-handle noiselessly, and glided
into the sitting-room, looking so transparent,
conscious, and all on fire with beauty and
animation, that even Edward was startled, and,
in a whisper, bade his mother observe what a
pretty girl she was; " beats all the county girls
in a canter."

Mrs. Dodd did look; and, consequently, as
soon as ever Edward was gone to Oxford, she
said to J.ulia, " You are feverish, love; you have
been excited with all this. You had better go to
bed."

Julia complied willingly, for she felt a strange,
and, to her, novel inclination; she wanted to be
alone and think. She retired to her own room,
and went the whole day over again; and was
happy and sorry, exalted and uneasy, by turns;
and ended by excusing Mr. Hardie's escapade,
and throwing the blame on herself. She ought
to have been more distant; gentlemen were not
expected, nor indeed much wanted, to be modest.
A little assurance did not misbecome them.
"Really I think it sets them off," said she to
herself.

Grand total: "What must he think of me?"

Time gallops in reverie: the town clock struck
twelve, and with its iron tongue remorse entered
her youthful conscience. Was this obeying
mamma? Mamma had said, Go to bed: not, " Go
up-stairs and meditate: upon young gentlemen."
She gave an expressive shake of her fair shoulders,
like a swan flapping the water off its
downy wings, and so dismissed the subject from
her mind.

Then she said her prayers.

Then she rose from her knees, and cajoled the
imaginary cat out from its theoretical hiding-
place. "Puss! puss! pretty puss!"

Thieves and ghosts she did not believe in, yet
credited cats under beds, and thought them
neither "harmless" nor "necessary" there.

After tenderly evoking the detested and
chimerical quadruped, she proceeded none the less
to careful research, especially of cupboards.
The door of one resisted, and then yielded with a
crack, and blew out the candle. " There now,"
said she.

It was her only light, except her beauty.
They allotted each Hebe but one caudle, in that
ancient burgh.