'Name you? Has any one named you? Indefinable, unconquerable, unfathomable Incognita! Has any one presumed to give you a human genealogy? Are you not straight descended from the clouds? without even taking the time to change yourself first into a mortal? Explain, expound, unravel to me, in soft pity--' Juliet solemnly entreated him to forbear any further interrogatory, assuring him that all enquiry gave her pain. 'Then shall "the stars,"' cried he, '"fade away, the sun grow dim, and nature,"--like my poor old carcass!--"sink in years," ere one grain more of the favourite attribute of our general mother shall be sown in my discourse! But you, in all things marvellous! You! have you really, and _bona fide_, so little in your composition of our naughty mamma, as not even to desire to know in what shape appeared to me the tattling little elf, that talked to me of Lord Denmeath?' 'You have not then, Sir, seen him?' 'Or if I had?--twenty interviews would not have initiated me into his affairs with so much promptitude, as twenty minutes sufficed for doing with my elfin fay.' 'I conjecture, then, Sir, your informant: Miss Selina Joddrel?' 'Even so. Upon determining to quit Brighthelmstone, three or four days ago, I drove over to Lewes, to offer what apologies I could suggest to Mrs Maple, for the vagaries of my hopeful nephew and heir,--who is suddenly set out for Constantinople in search, as he writes me word, of a fair Circassian! The last of my designs, in so delicate a case, you will easily believe, was to embarrass the injured and deserted fair one by my sight. But she had a fortitude far above my precautions. She flew to me herself; and her own plaintive tale had no sooner been bemoaned, than she hastened to favour me with the history of the whole house. I then learnt your sudden disappearance; and heard, with extreme satisfaction, from the indignation I had felt in seeing your ill treatment, that my meek sister-in-law had fallen into fits, from the first shock of finding that you were no longer under her dominion. My Lord Denmeath, who had already gone through the ceremonial of demanding Mrs Maple's permission to obtain a private audience with you, seemed thunderstruck at the news, that the bird he so much wished to sing to him was flown. The whole house was in disorder; running, enquiring, asserting, denying;--the wild Elinor alone was tame and tranquil,--for Mr Harleigh has kept constantly in sight.' Delicate, and ever feeling Harleigh! thought Juliet; Her life, and My reputation, hang suspended upon the same guardian care!