Had she been aware how very complimentary to Edmund were the causes which had unconsciously operated upon her manner, in producing the unusual restraint of which she was so painfully conscious, she would have acquitted herself of unkindness to an old friend, and want of generous feeling towards the friendless; for we can venture to assert, upon our own knowledge of her warm-hearted character, that had Edmund not been tall or handsome; had his figure and carriage had no air, no look of consequence, no dignity, no grace; had there been no expression in his eyes, particularly when he looked at her; no glow on his cheek, especially when he spoke to her; nothing at all dangerous in his smile, or persuasive in the tones of his voice, particularly when he spoke to her; had she never heard his gallant actions and high character extolled; had she never known Mr. Jackson, as he laid down the newspaper, exclaim, "There is true nobility for you! Pray what is it that you titled people inherit from your ancestors, but the distant reflection of some great exploit performed by some one of them, for which he was ennobled! Then, is not that man, in whom the splendour of noble deeds is self-existent, in whom it shines independent of reflection, greater than any of you? And yet," would he add, with that glaring inconsistency of which the wisest of us are often guilty, "I have not a doubt that my Edmund, my boy, will yet prove the descendant of a line of ancestry as exalted as his own merits, and I need say no more!" Had nothing, we say, of all this been the case; on the contrary, had all this been reversed--had Edmund been, as indeed he might have been, and yet have been a very worthy personage, a little, insignificant-looking, diminutive-faced, bandy-legged fellow, with a grey freckled skin, light red hair, and green-gooseberry eyes, who had never done any thing remarkable in his life, of whom nobody spoke, whose entrance into a room created no sensation,--in this case, we maintain that Julia would have felt, forcibly, his situation as the protegé of her family; that she would have dreaded the thoughts of his feeling himself little among so many great people; and that, therefore, she would have shown him, particularly on his return home, the most marked attention, and bestowed, too, with the utmost frankness. This morning, however, she had not yet seen him, to remind her of the tall and awful hero he now appeared in her eyes; and she had been studiously bringing to her recollection what he had been, when Frances and herself used to vie with each other in declarations of how much they loved him, and ask him, again and again, which he loved best; and she well remembered (but, of course, as the nonsense of children) that he used to tell her, when Frances would get tired of the subject, and run away to play, that it was her he loved best; that she was his favourite, his darling Julia! &c. &c.