“If you mean, how he comes to visit at Monkbarns, you must ask my uncle, who will probably reply, that he invites to his own house such company as he pleases; and if you mean to ask Sir Arthur, you must know that Mr. Lovel rendered Miss Wardour and him a service of the most important kind.” “What! that romantic story is true, then?--And pray, does the valorous knight aspire, as is befitting on such occasions, to the hand of the young lady whom he redeemed from peril? It is quite in the rule of romance, I am aware; and I did think that she was uncommonly dry to me as we walked together, and seemed from time to time as if she watched whether she was not giving offence to her gallant cavalier.” “Dear Hector,” said his sister, “if you really continue to nourish any affection for Miss Wardour”-- “If, Mary?--what an if was there!” “--I own I consider your perseverance as hopeless.” “And why hopeless, my sage sister?” asked Captain M’Intyre: “Miss Wardour, in the state of her father’s affairs, cannot pretend to much fortune;--and, as to family, I trust that of Mlntyre is not inferior.” “But, Hector,” continued his sister, “Sir Arthur always considers us as members of the Monkbarns family.” “Sir Arthur may consider what he pleases,” answered the Highlander scornfully; “but any one with common sense will consider that the wife takes rank from the husband, and that my father’s pedigree of fifteen unblemished descents must have ennobled my mother, if her veins had been filled with printer’s ink.” “For God’s sake, Hector,” replied his anxious sister, “take care of yourself! a single expression of that kind, repeated to my uncle by an indiscreet or interested eavesdropper, would lose you his favour for ever, and destroy all chance of your succeeding to his estate.” “Be it so,” answered the heedless young man; “I am one of a profession which the world has never been able to do without, and will far less endure to want for half a century to come; and my good old uncle may tack his good estate and his plebeian name to your apron-string if he pleases, Mary, and you may wed this new favourite of his if you please, and you may both of you live quiet, peaceable, well-regulated lives, if it pleases Heaven. My part is taken--I’ll fawn on no man for an inheritance which should be mine by birth.” Miss M’Intyre laid her hand on her brother’s arm, and entreated him to suppress his vehemence. “Who,” she said, “injures or seeks to injure you, but your own hasty temper?--what dangers are you defying, but those you have yourself conjured up?--Our uncle has hitherto been all that is kind and paternal in his conduct to us, and why should you suppose he will in future be otherwise than what he has ever been, since we were left as orphans to his care?”