urder tot Luise of

youwie farey and daat he would not l'sten.to any sensible cours tip, le pax 90 edtei ane of Poverloy, and wood bor an ensign, the lowest g Languish was hea

Miss

sax of thirty thou

61 unds, the ator part of which she would it she mried befo e s'e gidue of age withber sant's concont But a copami' this wid seemed to her be very flow,r of love's monce, and she declared that she could never

}

V

all the other folly she had learned from sentimental novels.

"The dear delicious shifts I have been put to," she said to her confidante, "to gain half a minute's conversation with Beverley! How often have I stolen forth, in the coldest night in January, and found him in the garden, stuck like a dripping statue! There would he kneel to me in the snow, and sneeze and cough so pathetically; he shivering with cold and I with apprehension; and while the cold blast numbed our joints, how warmly would he press me to pity his flame, and glow with mutual ardor! Ah, that was something like being in love."

Had the romantic Lydia known the truth, her affection for her dear Beverley would have been sadly damped. The fact was that her lover was deceiving her. Instead of being an humble ensign, he was really a captain in the army, a son of Sir Anthony Absolute, and therefore a perfectly suitable connection. But knowing Miss Lydia's romantic fancy, and that she would not listen to any sensible courtship, he had assumed the name of Beverley, and wooed her under the guise of an ensign, the lowest grade in army rank. Miss Languish was heiress to a fortune of thirty thousand pounds, the greater part of which she would lose if she married before she came of age without her aunt's consent. But to commit this wild folly seemed to her the very flower of love's romance, and she declared that she could never