“‘And it’s, Oh! what will become of me? Oh! what shall I do? Nobody coming to marry me, Nobody coming to woo.’” CHAPTER XV. “True love’s the gift which God has giv’n To man alone, beneath the heav’n; It is the secret sympathy, The silver link, the silken tie, Which heart to heart, and mind to mind, In body and in soul can bind.” Happy love, though the most delightful in reality, is the most uninteresting in description; and lovers are proverbially bad company, except for one another: therefore we shall not intrude on Captain Walsingham and Amelia, nor shall we give a journal of the days of courtship; those days which, by Rousseau, and many people, have been pronounced to be the happiest; by others, the only happy days of existence; and which, by some privileged or prudent few, have been found to be but the prelude to the increasing pleasures of domestic union. Now that Mr. Beaumont saw his sister and his friend thus gratified in their mutual esteem and affection,--now that he saw all obstacles to their union removed, he became uncontroulably impatient to declare his own attachment to Miss Walsingham. “My dear mother, I can bear it no longer. Believe me, you are mistaken in the whole romance you have imagined to yourself about Miss Hunter. She is no more in love with me than I am with her. Since you fixed my attention upon her, I have studied the young lady. She is not capable of love: I don’t mean that she is not capable of wishing to be married, but that is quite a different affair, which need not give me any peculiar disturbance. My dear mother, find another husband for her, and my life for it, her heart will not break; especially if you give her bales of wedding finery enough to think and talk about for a calendar year. “You abominably malicious monster of cruelty, I will not smile, nor will I allow you to indulge your humour in this manner at the expense of your poor victim.” “Victim! never saw a girl look less like a victim, except, indeed, as to her ornaments. I believe it is the etiquette for victims to appear dressed out with garlands, and ribands, and flowers.” “Positively, Edward, I won’t allow you to go on in this style;--do you know you seriously hurt and offend me? do you consider that Miss Hunter’s mother was my most intimate friend, and this match I have anxiously wished, in consequence of an agreement made between us at your birth and Albina’s?” “Oh, ma’am, those agreements never turned out well, from the time of the Arabian tales to the present moment. And you must pardon me if, after having tried all that reason and patience would do, in vain, I now come to impatience, and a little innocent ridicule. Except by laughing, I have no other way left of convincing you that I never can or will marry this young lady.” “But so pretty a creature! Surely you _have thought_ her pretty.”