Courcy incompleted for several years--for it is a long time now since the foolish adventure of the flower-pot first showed me that she took a tenderer interest in me than merely that of a cousin--and I now determined to give my second chapter the finishing touch, and consult her on the farther conduct of the story. "Martha," I said, "I wish you would listen for a minute or two to what I've written." So she sat down in my study, and worked a flower in an Ottoman square, and was evidently prepared to listen with the utmost attention. "It is the rest of the second chapter." "Oh, are you only there yet? I was in hopes you had come to the end of the story." To the end of the story! Could the girl be hinting that I ought to tell her my mind; for I must tell you, I had so completely got over all prejudice about her birth, that I was strongly tempted to give an additional proof of my veneration for my uncle's memory, by giving his poor little orphan my name. Can she mean any thing by wishing me to come to the end of the story? "How do you mean to wind up?" she asked. "Oh! in a most mysterious and surprising manner; but we haven't got near the _denouement_ yet. There must be a duel, of course--a misunderstanding--and a rival." "Oh! Theodore Fitzhedingham has no occasion to fear a rival," said Martha, pretending to have lost the stitch. "No! 'Pon my word that's very good of you. Do you really think that Maria Valentine de Courcy will prefer him to every one else?" "She will be a very foolish, a very ungrateful girl, if she doesn't--for hasn't he loved her ever since she was a child?" "Well, Martha, you are certainly a very nice, a very affectionate girl; and I may as well put your mind at rest at once by telling you"-- "Sneezum! Sneezum!" There was old Morgan again kicking at the study door, and holloing Sneezum with all his might. I had taken Martha's hand, and was just going to tell her to make preparations to become Mrs Sneezum in a week or two. I let go her hand, and rushed to the door. "What the mischief do you want?" "Why, here's Billy come back again," he said; "won't you come and give a welcome to poor Billy?" "No; I be hang'd if I do. He has never apologized for pushing me down the steps; tell him to get out of my house; I have not forgot what alarm my accident caused to poor Martha. Don't you remember it, my dear?" But there sat Martha--sometimes red and sometimes white--with tears in her eyes, and her lips half open, like the picture of St Cecilia. "There! the very recollection of it frightens her to death. Go to your room, my dear, and I'll send this blustering fellow out of the house." She glided out of the study without speaking a word, and I hurried to the drawing-room, but no Billy was there. His mother and sisters were luckily in London, so I turned angrily round on the father.