"Are you aware, my love, that when you have become a wife, you must quit home for ever, and remain with Mr. Boscawen at Brierly, to nurse him in sickness, and console him in sorrow?" "Oh, yes, papa, I know all that perfectly; and I shall like very much to nurse Mr. Boscawen, he is so good-tempered." "Yet, listen to me, Isabel, I have much to say," and her father's countenance and manner became impressively serious. "You are too young to understand the solemn vows you must make at the altar. I know Boscawen is a good man, or I should not have listened to his offer when he proposed for a girl young enough to be his daughter. You must have given him great encouragement, Isabel." "Oh yes, papa, I _did_. I told him I would be sure to be his wife, if you had no objection, and I hope you do not mean to prevent it." Lady Wetheral became indignant at her husband's serious view of matrimony, and she had recourse to her vinaigrette, as usual, upon exciting subjects. "I cannot imagine, Sir John, why you should endeavour to make doubts for Isabel, when such an offer may never occur again--certainly not to Isabel, who has so little appearance. It quite provokes me to hear you raising difficulties about a nonsensical affair of marriage. Isabel will marry like other girls, and get on like other people." "I do not wish my daughter to marry like other girls, Gertrude. I wish Isabel to be happy and respected." "And who will deny her being very happy, Sir John, when she has every luxury her mind can invent; and who denies a woman's respectability when she is rich and well connected? Nonsense, my dear." "We never agree in sentiment, Gertrude," said her husband, gravely. "How can I see things, love, in the strange light you represent them? My mother never read _me_ such lectures as you preach to Isabel, and I was scarcely her age when I married. I was congratulated on my good fortune, and you know we both drove immediately to Hamlet's. Pray let Isabel enjoy herself." "Oh pray, papa, let me have Mr. Boscawen," cried Isabel, clasping her hands as the tears burst from her dark, blue eyes. "Do not say I am not to have Mr. Boscawen! and he has ordered me a tilbury cloak upon the certainty of my accepting him; it is to have a leopard's claw as a fastening round my throat! Oh papa, papa!" "I have not uttered a word about refusing Mr. Boscawen, my love." "Oh, thank you, papa, thank you!" and Isabel flew to embrace her father. "My own good papa, not to make me miserable!" "You would be unhappy, then, if I declined Mr. Boscawen, Isabel?" "Oh, papa, wretched!--the cloak too of no use, and I had so set my heart upon the leopard's claw!" "A small 'forget-me-not' would have been in better taste, Isabel," observed her mother. "No, I particularly admire the leopard's claw, because Mr. Boscawen liked it. And then, papa, we are to drive in his tilbury, and I am to have a fur cap with a tassel, and choose it myself--I shall be so happy!"