"Why I should not," exclaimed Isabella, gaily, "I can give you twenty good reasons in a minute. We are both so thoughtless; we should ruin ourselves in a couple of years; we are both so merry, we should laugh ourselves to death in a fortnight; we are both so harum-scarum, as papa calls it, that it would not be safe for one to trust the other out of his sight; for a thousand to one we should never meet again; he would go to the East Indies, and I to the West seeking him; and then each would go to meet the other, and we should pass each other by the way." Mary Clifford smiled thoughtfully; and after pausing in meditation for a moment or two, she answered, "After all, Isabella, I have some doubts as to whether either of you is as thoughtless as you take a pleasure in seeming." "Oh, you do me injustice--you do me injustice, Mary," cried Miss Slingsby; "I seem nothing but what I am. As to Captain Hayward," she added, with a sly smile, "you know best, Mary dear. He is your _preux chevalier_, you know; delivered you from lions and tigers, and giants and ravishers, and, as in duty bound, has talked to nobody but you all day." Mary coloured a little, but replied straightforwardly, "Oh yes, we have talked a good deal, enough to make me think that he is not so thoughtless as my uncle says; and I know you are not so thoughtless as you say you are yourself. But what do you intend to do while they are gone?" "O, I shall sit up, of course," answered Isabella; "I always do, till papa goes to bed. When he has a large party, and I hear an eruption of the Goths and Vandals making its way hither--which I can always discover by the creaking of the glass-door--I retreat into that little room and fortify myself with lock and key, for I have no taste for mankind in a state of drunkenness; and then when they have roared and bellowed, and laughed, and quarrelled, and drank their coffee and gone away, I come out and talk to papa for half an hour, till he is ready to go to bed." "But is he always in a very talking condition himself?" asked Mary Clifford. "Oh, fie! now, Mary," exclaimed her cousin; "how can you suffer your mind to be prejudiced by people's reports. My father likes to see every one happy, and even jovial under his roof--perhaps a little too much--but if you mean to say he gets tipsy, it is not the case; I never saw him the least so in all my life; in fact I don't think he could if he would; for I have seen him drink as much wine as would make me tipsy twenty times over, without its having any effect upon him at all--a little gay, indeed; but he is always gay after dinner." Mary Clifford listened with a quiet smile, but replied not to Isabella's discourse upon her father's sobriety, merely saying, "Well, if you sit up, my dear cousin, I shall sit up too, to keep you company;" but scarcely had the words passed her sweet lips, when in came Sir John Slingsby and Mr. Beauchamp, the baronet holding a note open in his hand.