Louisa declared that with her the lover who was present was always the favourite. Sir James, who was standing beside her, giggled, and drew a step nearer. An expression of disgust passed over her countenance, which, however, she concealed, by stooping closer to her scrap-book, into which she was writing some passionate lines given her by Henry, of the ardour of whose manner when he last repeated the said lines she was reflecting at the moment. Jane thought, but did not say, that absence would rather add tenderness to feeling where it did exist; without, however, daring to associate the thought with the idea of one now absent--and who had once been remembered with tenderness--for his marriage with another had some time since appeared in the _Morning Post_. Madeline, whose heart was free, expressed openly the sentiment Jane had secretly thought, though not without one of those prophetic blushes which will suffuse the cheeks of even disengaged young ladies at the very anticipation of being one time or other in love in their turn. CHAPTER IV. Geoffery was still at the billiard table, where, with the assistance of Sir William Orm, he was engaged in plucking a new pigeon, no less a personage than the future head of the Salter family. Mr. John Salter was a vain, vulgar, selfish fool; in natural clumsiness a caricature of John Bull personified, yet so determined to be French and Frenchified, and so proud of his travels to and through Boulogne, that the young men about the rooms, to whom he afforded infinite amusement, called him the Marquis. Sir William Orm, though he had long since cut the other members of the Salter family, sometimes did the young man the honour to win his money; while Geoffery Arden, and several other fashionables, granted him the privilege of a limited portion of their acquaintance on the same liberal terms. When the Misses Salter, however, saw their brother bow to one gentleman, speak to another, and walk with a third, their drooping hopes naturally revived. "Who is that, John?--Has he much fortune--Is he married?--Couldn't you ask him to dinner some day?--And who is that? I never saw you speak to him before." Such were the questions and comments addressed by the young ladies to their hopeful brother, who never, however, took the trouble of giving them any satisfaction; his usual polite reply being, "If I choose to ask him to dinner, I won't wait for your leave you may depend upon it." "Well," said Miss Salter to her sister, "if we get plenty of men acquaintance through John, we needn't much care about the ladies after all. It's the men we want you know."