man, with very little guile; lazy, to a certain extent selfish, and considerably spoilt; but with an innate sense of right carrying him through many difficulties, and with a stout heart and a clear brain to support him under any trials. He loved this girl, and he wanted to know whether his love was returned. To get at this information he saw but one way--a proposal. I have before said that he knew every trick and turn of flirtation; but this was something of far deeper import than a flirtation; means which he had previously used to ascertain "how he stood" with the temporary object of his affections, and which had elicited the satisfactory glance, hand-pressure, or word, he would have now deemed degrading both to himself and to her. His regard for her had been growing throughout the past season, and was rapidly culminating. He had watched her attentively, and studied all her movements, with a satisfactory result. He felt that she was a little fast, certainly; but that fastness he was convinced resulted from the mere overflow of animal spirits, and not from any desire to please in men's eyes by affectation of men's ways. That she was an heiress he didn't care one bit about--he had plenty for both; and if she came to him, any thing that she had should be settled on herself. But how to ask her? Ah, how long did that pair of hair-brushes remain suspended over his head, while he gazed vacantly into the dressing-glass before him as this question rose in his mind! How often did he fling himself on the ottoman, nursing his foot and biting his lip in a perplexity of doubt! He could not go down on his knees, and offer his hand and heart, as they did on the stage; he could not write to her, either formally or spasmodically--he had a wholesome horror of committing himself on paper; he could not arrive at the knowledge he required through any third person; in fact (here the hair-brushes went to work again), there was no way but to take advantage of an opportunity, and propose. He must know his position, too, at once. He could not bear to see that fellow Beresford hanging about her as he had been the previous night. He'd do it that very day. His whole frame, which had been pleasantly cooled by his shower-bath, tingled again at the mere thought; and a faint empty feeling, something like that which he experienced when insulted in the Engineers' mess-room at Salem by Poker Cassidy, came over him. Would he get as well out of this as out of that encounter? Then he held his own; and Cassidy, neatly drilled by a pistol-bullet through his ankle, limps with a crutch to this day. But this was a very different matter.