"No, you was not."
"Not married, before I was seen by you?"
"Most surely not. Years, years before that event, I knew, and, knowing, loved you—loved you with all the fondness of man, while my age was that of a boy. Has Julia quite forgot her juvenile companions? Is the time worn from her memory, when Harry Woodley used to weave the fancied garland for her?"
"Protect me, Heaven!" cried I, "sure I am in the land of shadows!"
"No," cried he, clasping me in his arms, and smiling at my apostrophe, "you shall find substance and substantial joys too here."
"Thou Proteus!" said I, withdrawing myself from his embrace, "what do you mean by thus shifting characters, and each so potent?"
"To gain my charming Nymph," he answered. "But why should we thus waste our time? Let me lead you to your father."
"My father! Is my father here?"
"Yes, he brought me hither; perhaps, as Woodley, an unwelcome visitant. But will you have the cruelty to reject him?" added he, looking slyly.
"Don't presume too much," I returned with a smile. "You have convinced me, you are capable of great artifice; but I shall insist on your explaining your whole plan of operations, as an atonement for your double, nay treble dealing, for I think you are three in one. But I am impatient to behold my father, whom, the moment before I saw you, I was accusing of cruelty, in seeking to urge me in the favour of one I was determined never to see."