"'You don't do his fine character much justice in this transaction, though you always vaunted it up to Gay and me,' I said. 'If he had been a paltry money-hunter, you couldn't have served him much worse.' "'He is satisfied, is he not?' cried she. "Then I drew a horrible picture of your despair upon finding that she had gone, and how you fainted in trying to prepare to follow her, and--trust, me for making up a case! The last of it was her hanging on my shoulder, and crying over my broadcloth, and sobbing: "'Take me back to him, Mr. Davenport; how could I have been so cruel as to leave him in his weakness, uncared for! Take me back again.'" "And so----" "Well, now, I rather enjoy the mighty interest with which you survey me! And so Mrs. Stanhope granted me an interview, in which I told her to look out for another governess, as Miss Walsingham had been sent for on very particular business, to go home to England, and Miss Margaret and I had a very nice little trip back. I have, you may be sure, spared no eloquence in keeping Miss Margaret's alarms up about you, and she is waiting below, doubtless with her heart in her mouth, to know whether you're dead or alive." "What! Is she here? Let me go for my fair girl this----" "Fair and softly, my young sir. I have a proposition to make, before I let you out of my power. What day of the month is this?" "Twenty-fifth." "And what must be done before the twenty-eighth? Eh? Don't you know? Miss Margaret must be wooed and won before the twenty-eighth. And why? Because Madam Brand's will was written on the twenty-eighth of last March, and the year in which you were to marry your co-heir passes in three days, and after that, according to the will, you can't have one inch of Seven-Oak Waaste. What does that necessitate, then? (Oh, young people, what would you do without me!) Why, you must marry her, colonel--by Heaven! you must--before the twenty-eighth! What do you think of that for a little romance?" "Too much of Heaven's brightness--too little of earth's shadows. You see I don't deserve that she should love me." "Humph! no. I can't say that you do. But that's nobody's business if the lady's pleased. Now, having given your memory a jog about the flight of time, I'll send her up to you." "Let me go to her."