He turned and stood for some moments looking after the carriage, till it was out of sight.

"She's an odd creature, Chantrey," he said as they walked on again. "Too much character for a woman is like too much canvas upon a yacht, likely to upset her in the first squall. I'd like to see her out of her scampish father's hands-that fellow with the swell waistcoat." The Major shook his head. "A bad child's guide, that fellow; but he's got his daughter into good society, and if she don't carry too much canvas, as I say, she'll do well. There's a girl who would have died for me once, Chantrey," said the Major, with a full-bodied sigh. "The worst of it now is this, that when I would advise her and be a sort of guardian angel to her in the perils of her position, my hands are tied. A young lady never yet saw the distinction between friendship and love."

With this lively notion of the Major turning "guardian angel," we may dismiss the wayfarers to finish their walk till we meet them again in the next chapter.

CHAPTER XXII.

LOVE-MAKING BY PROXY.

THE two gentlemen met Mr. Wertley on his hall door-steps, sunning himself like an old cock grouse; and David introduced his friend De Lindesey as Mr. Wertley's fellow-countryman. The Major acquitted himself on the occasion with a frank good-fellowship and soldierly ease.

“I have seen you often in old Embro'," he said, “and I know those who know you. Scotchmen always fraternise abroad.”

“You are very welcome," said Mr. Wertley; "I am happy to know you. Yes, sir, we fraternise abroad, though we are always quarrelling at home. Come in, gentlemen, come in; in good time for dinner.”

They came in, and were ushered by their host into the drawingroom, where Emma was caught just slipping off by the other door. She was immediately secured, and introduced to the Major. She curtsied to him shyly; and then, turning to David, she met him with some cordiality. She gave him a very warm pressure of the hand,—still in the apologetic strain. She asked how he did, and how he left his little sister,-important questions which admit of all degrees of warmth,with the same apologetic significance. She had been so cruel in her late misconstruction, she really did not know well how to make it up to him. These words and looks of kindness, this friendly pressure of palms, is dangerous-full of fatal contagion. This fine young fellow had far better be locked up in his den, filling-in flimsy, than exposed to such a battery.

Mr. Wertley intercepted the current for a time, for he carried off David into the back room to show him a late purchase of his—a Cromwellian chair, in good preservation, square and sombre, studded with brass and bound with leather, picked up at Christie's for half-a-guinea.

This powerful attraction entertained David whilst the Major was making Emma's acquaintance at the window.

The enormity of their invasion he laid altogether upon his friend Chantrey's broad shoulders. Emma gave him a brief and distant assurance that it was no invasion. Mr. Chantrey's friends must always be welcome, she was sure. The Major was smiling, and Emmie was grave with a slight shy bloom on her cheek. He talked of old Embro', and named many families which she had known or heard of.

"I should guess you to be my countrywoman at once,” he said.

66

'My accent ?” asked Emmie, beginning to be at ease and to lift her eyes.

"Well, it has a delicate touch. The honesty but not the hardness of our accent," said the Major, showing his teeth graciously.

It is easy to charm the ears of the rural. Emmie had never been "out," and was never likely to be. The ease, the flow, the graceful bonhomie of the Major, had for her a novelty which caught her attention and flattered her. They had subjects in common also. Families whom she had seen or known in Edinburgh were also acquaintances of the Major. He knew all the gossip about them—their weak points, their merits, their births and marriages. Ten minutes glided by very smoothly, and Emmie began to be at her ease and to trust her wings; but the Major was not here to ingratiate himself or enchant this young country lass. He kept his friend's cause strictly in view. He returned to him fondly.

"I have seen you for the first time to-day, Miss Wertley, yet I have known you so well by report, I might have forgotten myself and bowed to you in the street."

"How was that ?" asked Emmie frankly.

"Ah, you ask how was that! I have had your portrait painted for me a dozen times in the day. I knew the colour of your eyes, the fashion of your hair, and your height to an inch."

This sort of thing might have done with our friend Milly. She would have tossed the shuttle lightly back again; but Emmie, the country prude, turned grave and silent.

The Major was not sensitive in his sympathies; he bantered pleasantly on in the same familiar strain.

"The artist is also a landscape-painter. I have had an inspired account of a certain day in the palm-house at Kew."

"Oh, yes; your friend Mr. Chantrey came with us to Kew," said she quietly.

"My friend!" returned the Major with a significant smile. "He has room in his thoughts for but one."

Here again how pleasantly Milly would have parried, or with what gentle inattention, or calm non-comprehension, would she have foiled the Major, and left him precisely where she had found him, with just a slight lift of her brows! But Emmie's eyes dropped, and Emmie's

VOL. XIV.

GG

colour rose. She looked neither prim nor repellent, but she kept her distance, and the Major perceived he had been too free. In his friendly anxiety to push Chantrey's interests he had forgotten his own disadvantageous display.

It is with much pleasure, notwithstanding some premonitory misgiving which we have not forgotten, that we attest the unfailing integrity of purpose and disinterested amiability of the Major during this visit to his countrypeople. In fact he did not wait for an easy opportunity of bringing his protégé to Emmie's side. No sooner did old Wertley bring David in sight, holding him securely by the button, than De Lindesey called over his friend with the most palpable tact and left him vis-à-vis with his idol.

He then slid away to the old man's side, and engaged him in some irrelevant discussion. What an acquisition is a friend like this in a love-affair! Such allies can see so much that we cannot see, and say so much we dare not say. They can foster the little business with so much grace and decorum. But ill thrives the o'er-fostered bairn, and love-affairs are often better let alone.

Strange to say, Emmie was not the same kind and winning lass to David as when he left her last. She was a little conscious, and very maidenly, as if she had begun to remember that the cordiality she had intended for conciliation might have a mischievous construction, and was not to be directed at random against one of our impressible sex. David indeed was no laggard in love. He was not forward or familiar, like his friend the Major, nor was he graceful and engaging, like the knight of old; he was too much in earnest for that. Love is uncouth and angular. Alas for the fact! the tragedy continually lapses into farce; when Love would look sweet and cheerful, the sweatbeads are upon the forehead. It is given to Puck to torment it and bring it to grief. When it would dance divinely, it falls to a dismal sink-apace. This is the reason, as all men know, that in life love is generally all on one side.

Poor David talked of himself, his feelings, and his hopes, with most confiding egotism. No man who knew him could call him a fool; but the gods stole his judgment that day, and what the Major in his generosity had begun, he managed to finish. Emmie's attention wandered to her father and the Major's conversation, and presently she joined

them on short notice.

When dinner was announced, the Major's friendly auspices were exercised in favour of Chantrey again. Old Wertley proposed to himself to send in his daughter upon the Major's arm; but the Major was deaf to the invitation, insensible to the honour; he beckoned his friend forward, and nodded towards the spot where Emmie stood. The consequence of his manœuvre was, however, that the young lady entered the parlour alone, and David loured upon his friend as he passed him, as if he took his patronage ill, or stupidly misinterpreted it.

But the Major never heeded his moody ingratitude, probably never perceived it; and I extol him for this. It is magnanimous to be kind and to persevere in kindness in the teeth of ingratitude. All through dinner the Major persevered in his encouragement. He magnified to Mr. Wertley the powers of the press and the influence of its myrmidons, -how every door flies open to them, and all public men are their sycophants, with that gracious exaggeration and liberal ignorance of his subject so often gloried in by men of position. He expatiated upon David's renown; the latter denying each glowing statement pretty bluntly and briefly, and thus marring its effect.

With what feelings Emmie regarded the Major, it is impossible for us to say; but Mr. Wertley's were unequivocal: he was charmed with him. Within the short space of two hours old Wertley had waged four distinct controversies, and had remained in possession of the field,-one upon the literary decadence of Edinburgh, in which he supported the negative; another upon the business talents of Scotchmen, which he depreciated with much humour and ability; the third upon the breeding of salmon, and their aliment-an open question; fourthly, a favourite subject, the healthy tendencies of war. Scarcely, however, had he thrown up his embankment upon this latter question than the Major, refusing battle, took to flight, reappearing with restored repose in the drawingroom. Upon the carpet the Major always appeared to advantage. He laid himself out to be agreeable this afternoon in all the crudity of daylight and sobriety; he sang some of Burns's best songs, and slipped in a little trifle,—the words and music composed by himself,—which really did not seem to him to lose by its company. Query: would the Major have made quite so much exertion to please these simple folk before he took the notion that society had turned its back on him? Though a hearty admirer of his, I think not.

David sat apart very silent, and watched till it was time to go. Four o'clock-half-past-five o'clock,—when will his ordeal be over? His heart was aching with some unwonted pain; he was struggling with some unreasonable anger, which he could not justly utter; he was in fact, in my opinion, undergoing the finest discipline in the world for a young man—a stiff attack of love and jealousy, an epidemic incident to full-blooded youth: it brings up their nature to its full growth, and prunes the exuberant conceit.

Emma sat apart from him, not assuredly in offence or caprice; she had become conscious and coy under the Major's supervision and before the glare of his very demonstrative tact. But she was not altogether unobservant of her friend's dejection, and, being the kindest and most compassionate creature of womankind,-bating a few points in which every woman is cruel,-she said to him pleasantly across the room,

"I do wish your little sister were with us, Mr. Chantrey. Will you let me send our servant for her, and we will send her back in the pony-phaeton ?"

"Thank you; I will go for her myself," said Chantrey, rising quickly, with a sense of relief, and, if we must confess it, wanting fresh air.

Emma exclaimed against his departure. His host would have held him back; but he overbore their remonstrances with a decision which would have graced a more dignified occasion, and strode forth into the fresh air and sunlight with something between a groan and muttered imprecation. The walk home did him good; and had he but secured an hour or so of soothing loneliness and reflection, no doubt the troubled heart within would have settled down; but fresh aggravation awaited him. Arrived at home, he looked in upon his father, of course, who hailed him from the parlour:

"Oh, Davy," said the old man, "it's a pity you were not here two hours ago."

"What for?"

"I've been entertaining your visitor for you."

"Oh, some messenger from the *** Office,-grist to the mill!" "No; a call of friendship-kindness—congratulation—that sort of thing."

"Who was it?"

"Now," continued Mr. Chantrey, speaking to himself, “he expectsthere has been a deputation of select aristocracy, to compliment him on being the son of such a mother!”

"Who was the visitor?" said David, pleasantly.

"What was his name? Egad, I forget. A tall clever gentleman; black hair; with a laugh like a handsaw; a literary man."

"Oh,"-David sat down relieved,-"Rawson! what had he to

say?"

“He's a man of sense, lad; a fellow without any silly enthusiasm about him. I've lived long enough to know a clever man when I meet him."

"Yes, I suppose Rawson is clever."

"We were talking of those reviews about your mother's wonderful book."

“Oh, he is a clever fellow enough. I should be very glad to have his opinion," said David respectfully.

"He does not seem to entertain a very high opinion of the work.” "He be d-d!" said David elegantly, with careless scorn. "On my soul, I'll take his opinion before yours!"

"I sha'n't dispute it, sir," said the son, with habitual zeal. "The book is beyond private verdict now; it has taken its place. You might as well rail at the Vicar of Wakefield. I've read it myself four times, and I think it is the most beautiful, natural, eloquent tale I have ever met. I would not trust my own judgment alone."

"Egad, nor I."

There was a pause; David had satisfied himself; and the old man stirred the fire deliberately before they went at the subject again.