34S LOVES OF A BACHELUU. 



scarcely withdrawing my eyes for a moment from its dial-plate. The 

 time appeared to me to move so slowly that a hundred times over 

 would 1 have positively sworn that my time-piece had stopped, had 

 I not heard its beating so distinctly. The two hours — each of which, 

 in my apprehension, extended to an age — at length expired, but no 

 answer to my letter ! Every hope was now demolished. The servant 

 whom I had entrusted with the communication had accidentally 

 learned that Miss Bennett was at home — a circumstance which was 

 suthcienlly demonstrative to me, when no reply was vouclisafed to 

 my letter, of the reception my overture had met with. Mortification 

 and shame now reigned paramount in my soul. My very life was 

 literally a burden to me : and I abhorred the very idea of being again 

 seen out of doors, or of again mixing in society. Night approached. 

 I threw myself on my bed, but no sleep, no rest for me. I tossed and 

 tumbled about on my couch one five minutes, and then rose and tra- 

 versed my bedchamber backwards and forwards another five, in 

 which way I spent the whole of the long, long night. Morning ap- 

 proached, but with it came no alleviation of my mental distraction. 

 A few minutes after breakfast time, two of my acquaintances called 

 on me, and, without uttering any thing in the way of exordium, ex- 

 pressed their condolence with me in consequence of the rejection of 

 the proposals I had last night made to Miss Beimett ! The observa- 

 tion fell on my ears with a power of which no description could fur- 

 nish the reader with any adequate conception. I wished at the mo- 

 ment that, instead of being doomed to hear it made, a thunderbolt had 

 alighted on me and annihilated me at once. On recovering par- 

 tially from the astounding effects of the observation in question, my 

 first feeling was one of wonder as to how my two acquaintances could 

 possibly have been so soon apprised of the fact of my tender overtures 

 to Mary Ann having met with so adverse a reception. I saw it would 

 have been fruitless and foolish to have denied that I had made pro- 

 posals of marriage to Miss Bennett, — laying the delinquency of such 

 denial out of the question. I frankly admitted that such was the 

 fact, enquiring at them, at the same time, as to the manner in which 

 they had come to hear of the circumstance. " Hear of it '." exclaimed 

 both of my acquaintances at once. " Before ten o'clock at night," 

 continued one of them, while the other uttered something of a similar 

 import, " Before ten o'clock at night, it was the only topic of conver- 

 sation in the more respectable circles in town, and almost every young 

 lady in the place could repeat verbatim the entire contents of the 

 epistle in which the 'iffev was made."' 



I could not be sufficiently cruel to wish my most inveterate enemy 

 the infliction of a tithe of the mental agony which this statement occa- 

 sioned to me. I had not indeed previously supposed the human 

 mind capable of bearing up under such a pressure of wretchedness 

 as I then felt hann-inar on me. While thus writhinof under the con- 

 joint circumstances of knowing that my addresses were spurned at by 

 Mary Ann, and that the entire community, by a most reprehensible 

 breach of good faith, were acquainted with the whole matter, I re- 

 ceived (my two friends were still present) a clumsy sort of package, 

 wrapped in a tattered fragment of green paper. I opened it in their 



