I received this information with an apparent cool indifference which I was far from feeling inwardly, for my heart beat at the intelligence. "Perhaps," said I, picking my teeth, and looking at my mouth in a little ivory _etui_, "perhaps she may be grown a fine girl: she bade fair to be so when I saw her; but fine girls are plentiful nowadays, since the vaccine has turned out the small-pox. Besides, the girls have now another chance of a good shape; they are allowed to take the air, instead of sitting all day with their feet in the stocks and their dear sweet noses bent over a French grammar under the rod of a French governess." Why I took so much pains to conceal from the best of parents the real state of my heart, I know not, except that from habit deceit was to me more readily at hand than candour, certainly my attachment to this fair and virtuous creature could not cause me to blush, except at my own unworthiness of so much excellence. My father looked disappointed--I knew not why--but I afterwards learned that the subject of our union had, since my brother's death, been discussed and agreed to between him and Mr Somerville; and that our marriage was only to be deferred until I should have attained the rank of captain, provided that the parties were agreed. "I thought," said my father, "that you were rather smitten in that quarter?" "Me smitten, sir?" said I, with a look of astonishment. "I have, it is true, a very high respect for Miss Somerville; but as for being in love with her, I trust no little attentions on my part have been so construed. I have paid her no more attention than I may have done to any pretty girl I meet with." (This was indeed true, too true.) "Well, well," said my father, "it is a mistake on my part." And here the conversation on that subject was dropped. It appeared that after the little arrangement between Mr Somerville and my father, and when I had gone to join my ship in America, they had had some communication together, in which Mr Somerville disclosed, that having questioned his daughter, she had ingenuously confessed that I was not indifferent to her. She acknowledged, with crimson blushes, that I had requested and obtained a lock of her hair. This Mr Somerville told my father in confidence. He was not, therefore, at liberty to mention it to me; but it sufficiently accounts for his astonishment at my seeming indifference, for the two worthy parents had naturally concluded that it was a match. Confounded and bewildered by my asseveration, that my father knew not whose veracity to impeach; but charitably concluding there was some mistake, or that I was, as heretofore, a fickle, thoughtless being, considered himself bound in honour to communicate the substance of our conversation to Mr Somerville; and the latter no sooner received it, than he placed the letter in Emily's hands--a very comfortable kind of _avant-coureur_ for a lover, after an absence from his mistress of full three years.