I perceived in Margaret's face a degree of anxiety and confusion whenever she saw me look serious. Our party, the following day, was augmented by two families, who came, in great form, to pay the bride, as they called my sister, their compliments, and to plague us with their ceremonious intrusion. I was in no humour for such company, and, pleading a head-ach, I kept close in my own apartment. Thus retired, I had just finished my solitary dinner when Lindsey entered the room; and, sitting down, commended my prudence and good fortune in escaping the people who were yet in the house. "I can do no more for Philip," added he, yawning, "and it may do him good if they teach him that no happiness here is permanent." I made no reply. "I find," continued Lindsey, "it is exactly as my wife had foreseen, you have taken offence, and Philip's caution is misconstrued. I will follow her counsels, for I have never had reason yet to repent of so doing. Listen to me, and then be angry if you please. During your brother's voyage hither his uncle informed him that he had long known of his _intrigue_ with Miss Sinclair. Lecture followed exhortation, and exhortation lecture: the unrepenting sinner kept his secret, and listened in patience. One letter from _Miss Sinclair_, enclosed in one from Montrose, reached poor Philip soon after his arrival here; and the reception he met with from his brother cheered his drooping spirits. At length his intelligence from Scotland failed; and his uncle gave him seriously to understand that Mr. Cowley wished to secure him for a husband for his daughter. Philip endeavoured to laugh at his uncle's having taken up a few random jokes as a premeditated design, but this evasion failing, he firmly told him that his affections were engaged, and that his honour, without other motives, would oblige him to refuse even Miss Cowley's offered hand. 'I would have spared you, Sir,' replied Mr. Flamall, with sternness, 'the pain of blushing before a man whose authority you have of late cast off, although from the hour of your birth he has lived for the purpose of making you a reasonable being. I had hoped to have seen you long since reclaimed from the weakness and infatuation of a boy deluded by his vanity and passions; but I see you require harsher remedies than mine since you have found your path to fortune smooth. Read that letter, and then judge of the nature of those engagements which your delicate honour opposes to a situation the most enviable.' He threw a letter on the table, and abruptly left the room. Philip found that it was one from his college tutor, Doctor Macleod, to his uncle; and, from its contents, it appeared that the discovery of his attachment to your sister had been made by him to Mr. Flamall; for, after his approbation of the measures which Mr. Flamall had pursued of removing the lover from so dangerous a predicament, he proceeds in detailing the conduct of the deserted fair one. 'This imprudent girl, writes the good