"I beg your pardon?" "About those, there. I knew your sister was engaged to somebody--but Charteris! Who would have thought of Charteris going to be married. What a ridiculous idea." I said, that the fact had ceased to appear so to me, having been aware of it for the last ten years. "Ten years! You don't say so!" And then his slow perception catching the extreme incivility of this great astonishment--my scarlet friend offered lame congratulations, fell to his dinner, and conversed no more. Perhaps he forgot the matter altogether--for Lisabel sat opposite, beside Colin Granton; and what between love and hate my cavalier's attention was very much distracted. Truly, Lisabel and her unfortunate swains reminded me of a passage in "Thomson's Seasons," describing two young bulls fighting in a meadow:--= ```"While the fair heifer balmy-breathing near, ```Stands kindling up their rage."= I blush to set it down. I blush almost to have such a thought, and concerning my own sister; yet it is so, and I have seen the like often and often. Surely it must be wrong; such sacred things as women's beauty and women's love were not made to set men mad at one another like brute beasts. Surely the woman could help it if she chose. Men may be jealous, and cross, and wretched; but they do not absolutely hate one another on a woman's account unless she has been in some degree to blame. While free, and shewing no preference, no one can well fight about her, for all have an equal chance; when she has a preference, though she might not openly shew it towards its object, she certainly would never think of shewing it towards anybody else. At least, that is my theory. However, I am taking the thing too seriously, and it is no affair of mine. I have given up interfering long ago. Lisabel must "gang her ain gate," as they say in Scotland. By the bye, Captain Treherne asked if we came from Scotland, or were of the celebrated clan Johnstone? Time was, when in spite of the aristocratic _t,_ we all grumbled at our plebeian name, hoping earnestly to change it for something more aristocratic,--and oh, how proud we were of Charteris! How fine to put into the village post, letters addressed, "Francis Charteris, Esq.," and to speak of our brother-in-law elect as having "an office under Government!" We firmly believed that office under Government would end in the Premiership and a peerage. It has not, though. Francis still says he cannot afford to marry; I was asking Penelope yesterday if she knew what papa and his first wife, not our own mamma, married upon? Much less income, I believe, than what Francis has now. But my sister said I did not understand: "The cases were widely different." Probably.