I turned, and beheld my good old uncle, Sir Guy, who was standing beside Lady Callonby. While I welcomed my worthy relative, I could not help casting a glance around to see if Guy were also there, and not perceiving him, my heart beat freely again. My uncle, it appeared, had just arrived, and lost no time in joining us at the gallery. His manner to me was cordial to a degree; and I perceived that, immediately upon being introduced to Lady Jane, he took considerable pains to observe her, and paid her the most marked attention. The first moment I could steal unnoticed, I took the opportunity of asking if Guy were come. That one fact were to me all, and upon the answer to my question, I hung with deep anxiety. "Guy here!--no, not yet. The fact is, Harry, my boy, Guy has not got on here as well as I could have wished. Everything had been arranged among us--Callonby behaved most handsomely--and, as far as regarded myself, I threw no impediment in the way. But still, I don't know how it was, but Guy did not advance, and the matter now"-- "Pray, how does it stand? Have you any hopes to put all to rights again?" "Yes, Harry, I think, with your assistance, much may be done." "Oh, count upon me by all means," said I, with a sneering bitterness, that my uncle could not have escaped remarking, had his attention not been drawn off by Lady Callonby. What have I done--what sin did I meditate before I was born, that I should come into the world branded with failure in all I attempt? Is it not enough that my cousin, my elder by some months, should be rich while I am poor--honoured and titled, while I am unknown and unnoticed?--but is he also to be preferred to me in every station in life? Is there no feeling of the heart so sacred that it must not succumb to primogeniture? "What a dear old man Sir Guy is," said Catherine, interrupting my sad reflections, "and how gallant; he is absolutely flirting with Lady Jane." And quite true it was. The old gentleman was paying his devoirs with a studied anxiety to please, that went to my very heart as I witnessed it. The remainder of that day to me was a painful and suffering one. My intention of suddenly leaving Munich had been abandoned, why, I knew not. I felt that I was hoping against hope, and that my stay was only to confirm, by the most "damning proof," how surely I was fated to disappointment. My reasonings all ended in one point. If she really love Guy, then my present attentions can only be a source of unhappiness to her; if she do not, is there any prospect that from the bare fact of my attachment, so proud a family as the Callonbys will suffer their daughter to make a mere "marriage d'inclination?"