The cheerful, healthy looking old gentleman, who is just turning from the gate towards that white house among the trees, is, as I told you, his uncle. Vivian’s parents died during his childhood, and left him to this uncle’s care. He has just returned from abroad, come of age,—taken possession of his paternal estates,—left the old gentleman to look after it, in his absence, and gone for the first time to pass a month or two amid the gaieties of the metropolis. And now let us after him with what speed we may. See! there is my friend, Fancy; just in time! descending in her opal chariot, drawn by a score of peacocks, which fly or creep, as the wayward goddess wills. Her rainbow scarf flutters in the air, her wild blue eyes sparkle with excitement, as she beckons us towards her. Give me your hand, sweet reader! so, one bound, and we are safe by her side; and now we too are on our road to London, and our vehicle glances like a meteor through the air. Since then we are so comfortably _en route_, let me just explain my motive for having been, as some will think, unnecessarily minute in my description of our hero. It was because I wished my young lady readers,—for whom this story is especially intended, to be interested in him, and I thought the surest way of making them so, was to let them trace, in his person as well as mind, a remarkable resemblance to some favored acquaintance of their own. Have I succeeded? Mary, Caroline, Julia, Isabel! Is he not the “perfect _image_” of—you know who? There—don’t blush, dear! I won’t tell. “_Revenons à nos moutons._” Hey day! what have we here? A traveling chariot broken down in the road! Our friend Vivian bearing a lady in his arms towards the neighboring inn, which the stage coach has already reached! An old gentleman, probably her father, staring and hurrying after them as fast as the gout will let him, and the servants, postilions &c., busy in untackling the horses and righting the injured vehicle. We won’t stop to inquire the cause of the accident. Fancy will tell us that at her leisure. Let us enter the inn. CHAPTER II. “My dear Margaret, are you well enough to proceed?” said the old gentleman to his daughter. “Oh! yes—papa!—quite well—” and she rose to tie on her bonnet. “But, papa!”—Margaret hesitated and blushed— “Well, child! what now?” “Don’t you think before we go, we should thank the young man, who so politely assisted me?” “Fudge! we shall have time enough to thank him,—we must go in the same coach. I can’t stay here all night to have the chariot repaired. Come, child!” They took their seats in the coach; Vivian entered after them and found himself opposite the dark-eyed girl, who had been thrown from the chariot, fortunately without injury, and whom he had carried half fainting to the inn. By her side was her father, and by Vivian’s side, a spruce and fidgetty youth, a would-be exquisite, daintily arrayed as that peculiar race are wont to be.