"Do so, my dear girl," replied her aunt; "though I am afraid you will find it in vain." Marian sat down and wrote, and put as much gentle sweetness into her note as would have gone far to soften any other man upon earth. She said not a word in regard to Colonel Manners, his quarrel with her uncle, or her own feelings on the subject: but she expressed to Lord Dewry how deeply gratified she was by his tenderness and affection; how ardently she hoped to retain it when she should become the wife of his son. She then went on to tell him, in language that came rushing from her heart, how bitterly painful it would be to her, if he continued the same determination of not being present at her marriage; and she entreated, with persuasions that none but woman could have written, that he would yield his resolution in this respect. In the whole course of her letter--though it was as artless as any collection of words that ever was penned--there was not one syllable that could offend the pride, or the vanity, or the feelings of her uncle--not one that could afford anger or irritation the least footing to rest upon. Had it been calculated upon the most experienced view of all the follies and passions of human nature, it could not have been better constructed; and yet, as we have said, it was as artless a composition as ever was penned: but the secret was, that it came from a fine, a gentle, and a sensitive mind. And now, while she folds, seals, and addresses it, with neat and careful hand, and gives it to the servant to be sent off immediately, we shall take the liberty of turning to another part of the subject, and treating of the person whose presence was the point of difficulty. CHAPTER VI. When Lord Dewry quitted Colonel Manners at the end of the flower-garden, as we have shown in a preceding chapter, the gallant soldier had turned back towards the house, but with steps much less rapid than those of the peer, from the simple fact of no violent passion moving in his breast. In truth, it would seem, after all, that man, notwithstanding his great pretensions, his reasonings about his own existence, and his conceit in his painted jacket, is not at all unlike one of those figures that children buy at fairs, with his arms and legs, and even his head, hung on by wires; and with the passions to pull the string at the back, not only without his volition, but often against his will. Wrath pulls, and he kicks; revenge pulls, and he strikes; jealousy pulls, and he writhes; fear pulls, and he runs; love pulls, and he dances; and, as no one of these passions was behind Colonel Manners at the time, he had walked on slowly and deliberately towards the house, sometimes turning to look at the landscape, sometimes trifling with a flower, but doing neither one nor the other, perhaps, quite so often as when he set out that day upon his morning's walk.