"We spent the evening there; and I never saw William appear to such advantage. If he could not raise his wife to the sphere in which he had been bred and born, he was to go down contentedly into hers; to constitute her happiness was to be the delight of his life. Mr Constant--who had long esteemed him highly, but had never before seen him open, throwing forth in rich profusion, the treasures of his noble heart and vigorous understanding--was in amazement. As for Mary, her heart seemed to be overflowing with happiness, while she contemplated, with a woman's pride, the high qualities of the man who had chosen her for his own. Every doubt as to the propriety of the momentous step which she had taken, having been removed by her father's knowledge, concurrence, and approbation-- "'----she, pleased, resigned To tender feelings all her lovely mind.' "Next day, William sent to his brother a plain unvarnished statement of all that had happened, expressed in a fair manly style--asking for nothing, apologizing for nothing, and conceding nothing; and, after having discharged this act of fraternal duty, he came and met me early in the afternoon in the town here, for the purpose of bringing me back with him to Sanditofts. It was the market day, and, wherever he went, his old friends gathered in congratulating groups around him; for he was a universal favourite. On our proposing to leave them, they absolutely laid violent hands on us; and so having sent off a card to apologize, and bring Mr Constant to meet us, we sat down along with them to their usual dinner in this same room. I could easily see that poor William would rather have been at Sanditofts, where his heart was; but, making a virtue of necessity, he exerted himself to please, and was successful. His affair with Sir Charles was brought on, or rather it insensibly stole upon the carpet. One person accidentally made a very distant allusion to it; a second reproved him for so doing; a third, a fourth, a fifth made observations, pointing, though from afar, to what had happened. Pleased and amused at the delicacy which was so visibly restraining the general feeling, William threw open the subject at once, by giving a modest statement of the whole affair. He added--'I would have done as much for any other young woman under the like circumstances; and what could I have done less for her who has been for long the object of my fondest love--a love now sanctioned by her father!' "The importance of this disclosure, and the deep pathos of his voice, produced an instant silence, which was first broken by Mr Macquil, the lawyer, who gave his opinion as to the legal bearings of the case. He assured us that Sir Charles had no ground for an action whatsoever, having been guilty of accosting rudely, and with evil intent, a lone woman--the most sacred of all objects in the eye of the law.