One morning the three were walking together; the sisters, with their usual friendly familiarity, leaning each on an arm of our hero, whom they always treated as a brother; when Frances began, in a laughing manner, to ask him how soon his marriage with Lady Susan was to take place. Edmund tried to smile, but sighed very heavily. “No! so it is really serious!” cried Frances. Julia too, commenced a sort of sigh, but, as soon as she was aware that she had done so, she closed her lips, that the breath might descend without sound. Edmund, on whom, as we have just observed, she was leaning, felt the slight movement, and was strangely gratified; not that he presumed to assign any cause to the sigh. “You know, Frances,” he said, in reply to the question about Lady Susan, “that business is completely a jest! I wonder, by the bye, her ladyship is not offended at being made the subject of a jest. But, were it otherwise,” he continued, with solemnity, “were she indeed the object of an overwhelming passion—were she indeed the being whose looks, whose words, whose smile gave value to each moment of existence—were she in short the object of a _first love_, which you know they say cannot be torn up without carrying with it the very fibres of the heart itself, and leaving it incapable of future energy; (I do not say that I should attempt to eradicate the sentiment, no, I should cherish its very miseries as preferable far to the barren waste, the joyless void of a heart weaned from love;) but such feelings, whatever it might cost me to suppress them, should never be permitted to pass my lips, while mystery hung over my birth.” “But may you not be loved for your own sake, Edmund, whoever you are?” said Frances, “and for the sake of the high character you have established for yourself, as Mr. Jackson says? I am sure I could not love you better, nor grandmamma, nor Julia, nor Mr. Jackson, if you turned out to be the eldest son of his Majesty, and rightful heir to the throne of Great Britain!” Edmund looked round involuntarily towards Julia, but her eyes were on the ground. “I hope, Frances,” he said, in a mournful tone, “that I shall always possess the kind regard of the friends you have named. This hope, indeed, is and ever must be the only solace of my isolated, and, in all other respects, hopeless existence!” “Don’t speak that way, Edmund, you make me quite melancholy!” said Frances, the tears starting into her eyes, as she held out her hand, which Edmund snatched and kissed. “You _hope_!” said Julia, in a tremulous tone, in which was something of reproach. She looked up for a moment as she spoke, and Edmund saw the glistening of tears in her eyes also. “I am sure,” he said, “of every thing that is noble, every thing that is generous, every thing that is kind.”—“That last word, Edmund,” said Julia, interrupting him, “is more like the language of the friend you ought to feel yourself among us.”