She thanked George, told him she was going nearly as far as Amherst by the "short cut," which lay through her uncle's land, and the two young people in another minute found themselves walking side by side, as if such an arrangement were quite a matter of course, to which Mrs. Grundy could not possibly make any objection. Of course it was highly imprudent, not to say improper, and one of the two was perfectly conscious alike of the imprudence and the impropriety; perfectly conscious, also, that both were increased by the fact that he was George Dallas, and the young lady was Clare Carruthers, the niece of his stepfather, the girl, on whose account mainly he had been shut out from the house called by courtesy his mother's. As for Clare Carruthers, she knew little or nothing of life and the world of observances and rules of behaviour. Sheltered from the touch, from the breath, from the very knowledge of ill, the girl had always been free with a frank innocent freedom, happy with a guileless happiness, and as unsophisticated as any girl could well be in this wide-awake realistic nineteenth century. She was highly imaginative, emphatically of the romantic temperament, and, in short, a Lydia Languish without the caricature. Her notions of literary men, artists, and the like, were derived from their works; and as the little glimpse which she had as yet had of society (she had only "come out" at the ball at Poynings in February) had not enabled her to correct her ideas by comparison with reality, she cherished her illusions with ardour proportioned to their fallaciousness. The young men of her acquaintance were of either of two species: sons of country gentlemen, with means and inclination to devote themselves to the kind of life their fathers led, or military magnificoes, of whom Clare, contrary to the fashion of young ladies in general, entertained a mean and contemptuous opinion. When Captain Marsh and Captain Clitheroe were home "on leave," they found it convenient and agreeable to pass a good deal of their leisure at Poynings; and as they happened to be ninnies of the first magnitude, whose insignificance in every sense worth mention was only equalled by their conceit, Miss Carruthers had conceived a prejudice against military men in general, founded upon her dislike of the two specimens with whom she was most familiar. Clergymen are not uncommonly heroes in the imagination of young girls, but the most determined curate-worshipper could not have invested the clergymen who cured the souls in and about Amherst with heroic qualities. They were three in number. One was fat, bald, and devoted to antiquarianism and port wine. Another was thin, pock-marked, ill-tempered, deaf, and a flute-player. The third was a magistrate, a fox-hunter, and a despiser of womankind. In conclusion, all three were married, and Miss Carruthers was so unsophisticated, that, if they had been all three as handsome and irresistible as Adonis, she would never have thought of