Colonel Hubert was awaiting the return of his aunt with much anxiety; an anxiety, by the way, which proceeded wholly from the fear that what she might have to report should prove his Agnes to be _un meilleur parti_ than he wished to find her. This singular species of uneasiness was in no degree lessened by the aspect of the old lady as she entered the drawing-room in which he was waiting to receive her. "This is a very singular romance, Montague, as ever I remember to have heard of," she began. "Here is this pretty creature, who was introduced to us as niece and adopted child, as I fancied, of the vulgarest and most atrociously absurd woman in England, without money or wit enough to keep her out of jail, and now she turns out to be a young lady of large fortune, perfectly well educated, and well descended on both sides of her house ... and all this, too, without any legerdemain, _denouements_, or discoveries.... I wish you joy heartily, Montague.... Her fortune is exactly what was wanted to make yours comfortable ... she has fifteen hundred a year, part of which is, by Miss Compton's account, a very improvable estate in Devonshire;--but I suspect the old lady will like to give a name to your second son, or should you have no second son, to a daughter. Nor can I blame her for this. By her account, Compton of Compton Basett has endured long enough in the land to render the wish that it should not pass away a very reasonable one; especially for the person who holds, and has to bequeath the estate, to which it has for centuries been annexed; so that point, I presume, you will not cavil at. You must take care, however, that the liberal-minded old gentlewoman, in making this noble settlement on her niece, does not leave herself too bare.... She talked of the _trifle_ that would follow at her death.... This ought not to be a trifle, and were I you, Montague, I would insist that the amount settled on Agnes at your marriage should not exceed one thousand a-year.... This, with the next step in your profession, will make your income a very sufficient one, even without the regiment which you have such fair reason to hope for." During the whole of this harangue, Colonel Hubert was suffering very severely; till by the time her ladyship had concluded, his imagination became so morbidly alive, that he almost fancied himself already in the presence of his injured friend ... he fancied him hastening home to be a witness at his marriage, and gazing with a cold reproachful eye as the beauty, the wealth, the connexions of Agnes were all shewn to be exactly what his friends would have approved for him, had not a false, a base, an interested adviser, contrived to render vain his generous and honourable love, that he might win the precious prize himself.