OR WHICH WILL HE WED? 317 



myrtle branch, and before Henry could determine from what 

 quarter they proceeded, his assailant, in the person of Mrs. Ather- 

 stone, stole like an arch Egyptian from the trees. " Have I then 

 detected you at the shrine, my pensive Pygmalion ?" exclaimed 

 " the swarthy and ill-favoured" assuming that peculiar expression 

 which had exhausted the ingenuity of the Captain to unravel : 

 "the occupation is, doubtless, more interesting than musing 

 among reeds and bulrushes, alders and water-lilies, with an air 

 as *triste and ahattu as that of some desperate lover of the olden 

 time deliberating by a purling stream whether he shall append 

 his fair person from the dark boughs of the cypress, or the more 

 lachrymose arms of the willow." "In truth I must admit," 

 continued the elderly, " your disordered mien at breakfast awoke 

 my apprehensions, and tempted me to entreat that my coz would 

 track you at a prudential distance, lest the carp should be called 

 upon to shed tears of amber for the untimely fate of the redoubt- 

 able Captain Atherstone, the victim of ennui and" — lowering 

 her tone to a sportive whisper, intended, apparently, for his ear 

 only — " a statue!" 



"Hah!" thought the Captain, as the allusion struck him, 

 *' she thinks that, like the fabled sculptor, I am inspired by the 

 charms of this beautiful image — this idol without soul ! N'im- 

 porte ! I will show her that my fetters are not so easily forged" 

 He called up his resolution, turned with an air of polished play- 

 fulness to his dark tormentor, and congratulated himself upon 

 his supreme felicity in having two guardian sylphs to hover 

 round his path, and snatch him from a watery grave. Lady 

 Eleanor, whose confusion had subsided, and restored her 

 natural blancheur of complexion, declared that she could not 

 prevail upon her cousin to refrain from breaking in upon his 

 reverie, with her floral missives — " Nay, nay, your Ladyship !" 

 exclaimed Mrs. Atherstone gaily, " I must even turn King's 

 evidence in self-defence ; but, first, tell us how long the mere 

 stalk of a rose has become the fashionable ornament of the 

 ceinture?" Captain Atherstone pursued the direction of his 

 sister's eye, and beheld, indeed, the broken and leafless stalk of 

 a rose fixed in the massive buckle of wrought gold that confined 

 her ladyship's robe : this tell-tale evidence seemed to occasion 

 its possessor some trifling discomfiture, for snatching it, pet- 

 tishly, from its place, she threw it from her, averring that 

 she knew not how she had lost the flower. 



" No fibs, Ellen, no fibs !" interrupted Mrs. Atherstone, put- 

 ting her jewelled hand upon the full lips of the speaker — "/ 

 could tell, an I would ;" and methinks there is a certain feathered 

 biped in the stream that, like the Sybarite, may now slumber 

 on rose leaves: but say, did I not, from my shady covert, over- 

 hear a proposition touching an excursion round the park ?" 

 "You did, my dear Madam," returned the Captain, eagerly, 

 who, despairing of displaying his exquisite skill in driving, his 



