"My lord, I shall be devotion itself to Mistress Edmonson, and I assure you that the young lady I have chosen, I having failed to win your adorable sister, is not a nonentity, though I cannot say that she is charming. But you will see her. Her father was very gracious to me when I was in Boston last winter, and regretted that I was obliged to leave in the spring on affairs of importance. How was he to know, he or the fair Elizabeth, that the business was a love suit? That would not have done. The old gentleman would not think the king himself too good for his daughter; if he dreamed that she was second fiddle, he would want me to find the door faster than he could shew me there. So, if you fall in love with her and want to supersede me, there's your chance." "I'm Jonathan to your David," returned the smaller man, "the kingdom is for you, Edmonson." And the speaker looked at his companion with an admiration that was deep in proportion as he felt himself unable to imitate that mixture of good nature, strong will, and audacity that in Edmonson fascinated him. "Is she handsome?" he added. "No," said the other decidedly. "She has a smile that lights up her face well, and occasionally she says good things, but half the time in company she seems not to be attending to what is going on about her, she is away off in a dream about something that nobody cares a pin for, and of course, it gives her a peculiar manner. I could see I interested her more than anybody else did, but I had hard work sometimes to know how to answer her queer sayings, for I could scarcely tell what she was talking about." "You don't like that," suggested Bulchester. "You like ladies who lead in society." "Well," assented Edmonson, "I know. But she will have to set up for an oddity, and, you see, she has money enough to be able to afford it. A fortune in her own right, and large expectations from the old gentleman who began with money and has never made a bad investment in his life. Think of it! Gerald Edmonson will keep open house and live rather differently from at present in his bachelor quarters; and all his old friends will be welcome." "What do you say to those we are going to meet to-night, who are to give us our farewell supper; you would not ask a set like that to a lady's table?" Edmonson laughed.