"Amuse me!" said Miss Margaret, with another peal of laughter; and then she dried her eyes, and recovered her composure. "Mr. Murray--if your name is Murray--" she said; "if you mean this for a joke--but I will not do you that injustice; I see you mean it in earnest. It is very unexpected. Do you think you have had time enough to consider whether this is a wise resolution? Do you remember that she is twice your age? No, no, I would not advise you to go that length," Miss Margaret said. "The question is, if you will forbid me," said Lewis; "if you will say I must not come." "Ay! And what would you do then?" "I think," he said, with a little hesitation, "I should then adopt the English way. I should submit my cause to your sister herself. But then there would be no deception, you would know." He met her with such an open look that Miss Margaret was disarmed. "You are a strange young man," she said, "with a strange taste for a young man: but I think you're honest: or else you are a terrible deceiver--and, if your meaning is what you say, you have no motive, that I can see, to deceive." "I have told you my motive," said Lewis. "I speak the truth." She looked at him again with her searching eyes. "Perhaps you think we are rich?" she said. "I have heard, on the contrary, that----" She waved her hand. It was not necessary that he should say poor. "Perhaps you think--but I cannot attempt to fathom you," she said. "You are a very strange young man. Jean! have you considered that she's twice your age? I have no right to interfere. I will not forbid you the house. But she will never take you, or any like you; she has more sense," Miss Margaret cried. To this Lewis only answered with a bow and a smile, in which perhaps there was something of the conqueror; for indeed it did not occur to him, as a contingency to be taken into consideration, that she might refuse him. They walked on together for some time in silence, for Miss Margaret was too much confused and excited to speak, and Lewis had no more to say to her, feeling that it was only justice to the sister he had chosen that she should have the first and the best of the plea. It might be ten minutes after, and they were in sight of the old house, within which the two figures before them had disappeared, when Miss Margaret suddenly stopped short, and turned upon him with a very serious and indeed threatening countenance. "Young man," she said, in a low and passionate voice, "if you should prove to be making a mask of my sister for other designs, if it should be putting forward one to veil a deeper design upon another, then look you to yourself--for I'll neither forgive you, nor let you slip out of my hands." Lewis met this unexpected address with sincere astonishment. "Pardon me, but I do not know what deeper design I could have. What is it that I could do to make you angry?" he said.