'And how can they do any better?' said the Baronet; 'unless you invite them into your apartments? 'Tis precisely what I shall enact myself, if you turn me out of doors! Do you fancy you are to dart yourselves, you and your mischievous partner, into as many hearts as you can find spectators, and then bid your poor wounded gazers go lie down and bleed, in the kennel, like so many puppies; without allowing them even a lamenting yell, or friendly barking, to call themselves into notice before they give up the ghost? I pity the poor caitiffs with all my heart. 'A fellow-feeling makes one wond'rous kind!'[2] [Footnote 2: Garrick.] 'Let me, however, hope, that the seductive tale which I have been quaffing, has not intoxicated all my senses only to my own destruction! that my poor nerves have not been pierced and pinched; that my feelings have not been twitched and tweaked, and my senses scared and confounded, only to drag my own crazy folly into fuller view!' He paused a few minutes, during which Gabriella began making out the account of her ribbons; and then, with a mild voice, but an arch brow, 'Hear me,' he resumed, 'my dulcet frog! for such, you know, is your destined classification in this country; hear, and under your auspices let me proceed. If this fair marvellous Wanderer,--in her birth no longer an Incognita, yet an Incognita still in her history; will venture to put herself under my protection,--honourably I mean; so don't frown! for nothing so spoils the forehead! Besides, who can look at you, and not mean honourably? With all your sweetness, there is a fire in your eye, that, if I harboured a naughty idea, only for a moment, would, I see plainly, consume me. Let us, however, talk the matter over with becoming seriousness. It may, perchance, be less difficult than you may imagine, to establish your fair journeywoman's rights.' 'O make the attempt, then,' cried Gabriella; 'exert yourself in so noble a trial!'