"Yes; pardon me for paining you, dearest, by saying so; but it is nevertheless true." "And these views?" I asked, impetuously. "Are an offer made for my hand by Lord Slubber de Gullion." My heart died within me on hearing this name, which, as I once before stated, comes as near the original as possible. "Hence you see, dearest Newton," she resumed, in a mournful and sweetly-modulated voice, "were you to address my father, it would only rouse mamma, and have the effect of interrupting our correspondence for ever." "Good heavens! what then are we to do?’ "Wait in hope." "How long?" "Alas! I know not; but for the present at least our engagement, like our meetings and our letters, if we can correspond, must be secret—secret all. Were the earl, my father, to know that I loved you, Newton (how sweetly those words sounded), he and mamma would urge on Lord Slubber’s suit, and, on finding that I refused, there would be no bounds to mamma’s wrath. You remember Cora’s story of the ’Clenched Hand;’ you remember the ’Bride of Lammermoor,’ and must see what a determined mother and long domestic tyranny may do." I clasped my hands, for my heart was wrung; but she regarded me kindly and lovingly. "On your return home, as colonel of your regiment, perhaps, we shall then, at all hazards, bring the matter before him, and treat Slubber’s offer with contempt, as the senile folly of an old man in his dotage. You, at least, shall propose for me in form——" "And if Lord Chillingham refuse?" "Though we English people can’t make Scotch marriages now, I shall be yours, dearest Newton, as I am now, only that it shall be irrevocably and for ever." A close and mute embrace followed, and then I left her in a paroxysm of grief, while my head whirled with the combined effects of love and joy, and of sorrow, not unmixed with anger. "I wonder what the subjects are that lovers talk of in their tête-à-têtes," says my brother of the pen and sword, W. H. Maxwell, and the same surmise frequently occurred to myself, before I met or knew Louisa Loftus. We never lacked a subject now. The peculiarities of our relative positions, our caution for the present, and our natural anxieties for the future, afforded us full topics for conversation or surmise; but the few remaining days of my leave "between returns" glided away at Calderwood Glen; the time for my departure drew nigh; already had Pitblado divided a sixpence with my lady’s soubrette, and packed up all my superfluous traps, and within six and thirty hours Berkeley and I would have to report ourselves in uniform at head-quarters, or be returned absent without leave. It was in the evening, when I had gone as usual to meet Louisa at the seat where the close-clipped yew hedges formed a pleasant screen, that, to my surprise, and by the merest chance, I found it occupied by my cousin Cora.