_Ch._ I am delighted to hear it--a--I mean I feel a pleasure, a melancholy and chastened pleasure, in reflecting that, if your distress is not of a pecuniary nature, it may perchance lay in my power to alleviate your sorrow. _Miss T._ Impossible, sir, though I thank you for your respectful sympathy. _Ch._ How many women would forego twenty years of their lives to be as beautiful as yourself, little dreaming that extraordinary loveliness can co-exist with the most poignant anguish of mind! But so, too often, we find it, do we not, dear lady? _Miss T._ Sir! this tone of address, from a complete stranger! _Ch._ Nay, be not unreasonably severe upon an impassionable and impulsive man, whose tongue is but the too faithful herald of his heart. We see the rose on the tree, and we say that it is fair, we see the bonnie brooks purling over the smooth stanes--I should say stones--in the burn, and we say that it is beautiful, and shall we close our eyes to the fairest of nature’s works, a pure and beautiful woman? Why, it would be base ingratitude, indeed! _Miss T._ I cannot deny that there is much truth in the sentiments you so beautifully express, but I am, unhappily, too well aware that, whatever advantages I may possess, personal beauty is not among their number. _Ch._ How exquisitely modest is this chaste insensibility to your own singular loveliness! How infinitely more winning than the bold-faced self-appreciation of under-bred country girls! _Miss T._ I am glad, sir, that you are pleased with my modesty. It has often been admired. _Ch._ Pleased! I am more than pleased--that’s a very weak word. I am enchanted. Madam, I am a man of quick impulse and energetic action. I feel and I speak--I cannot help it. Madam, be not surprised when I tell you that I cannot resist the conviction that you are the light of my future life, the essence of every hope, the tree upon which the fruit of my heart is growing--my Past, my Present, my Future, my own To Come! Do not extinguish that light, do not disperse that essence, do not blight that tree! I am well off; I’m a bachelor; I’m thirty-two; and I love you, madam, humbly, truly, trustfully, patiently. Paralyzed with admiration, I wait anxiously, and yet hopefully, for your reply. _Miss T._ Sir, that heart would indeed be cold that did not feel grateful for so much earnest, single-hearted devotion. I am deeply grieved to have to say one word to cause pain to one who expresses himself in such well-chosen terms of respectful esteem; but, alas! I have already yielded up my heart to one who, if I mistake not, is a dear personal friend of your own. _Ch._ Am I to understand that you are the young lady of property whom Belvawney hopes to marry? _Miss T._ I am! indeed, that unhappy woman! _Ch._ And is it possible that you love him? _Miss T._ With a rapture that thrills every fibre of my heart--with a devotion that enthralls my very soul! But there’s some difficulty about his settlements.