'And where,' he continued, 'have you all this time been eclipsed? From sundry circumstances, that perversely obtruded themselves upon my knowledge, in defiance of the ill reception I gave them, I was led, at first, to conclude, that you had been spirited away by Sir Lyell Sycamore.'
He fixed his eyes upon her curiously; but the colour that rose in her cheeks betrayed no secret consciousness; it shewed open resentment.
'O! I soon saw,' he resumed, as if he had been answered, though she had not deigned to disclaim an idea that she deemed fitted simply for contempt; 'by the mortified silence of my young gallant, that the fates had not been propitious to his wishes. In characters of his description, success never courts the shade. It basks in the sun-shine, and seeks the broadest day. How is it that you have thus piqued the vain spark? He came to me in such a flame, to upbraid me for what he called the cursed ridiculous dance that I had led him, that I fairly thought he meant to call me out! I began, directly, to look about me for the stoutest of my crutches, to parry, for a last minute or two, his broad sword; and to deliberate which might be the thickest of my leather cushions, to hold up in my defence, for reverberating the ball, in case he should prefer pistols. But he deigned, most fortunately, to content himself with only abusing me: hinting, that such superannuated old geese, as those who had passed their grand climacteric, ought not to meddle with affairs of which they must have lost even the memory. I let him bounce off without any answer; very thankful to the "Sisters three" to feel myself in a whole skin.'
Looking at her, then, with an expression of humorous reproach, 'You will permit me, I hope, at least,' he added, 'to flatter myself, that, when your indulgence to the garrulity of age has induced you to bear with my loquacity till I am a little hoarser, your consideration for sore throats and heated lungs, will prevail upon you to utter a little word or two in your turn?'
Juliet, laughing, answered that she had been too well amused, to be aware how little she had seemed to merit his exertions.
'Tell me, then,' cried he, with looks that spoke him enchanted by this reply; 'through what extraordinary mechanism, in the wheel of fortune, you have been rolled to this spot? The benevolent sprites, who have urged me hither, have not given me a jot of information how you became known to Mrs Ireton? By what strange spell have you been drawn in, to seem an inmate of her mansion? and what philters and potions have you swallowed, to make you endure her never-ending vagaries?'
Half smiling, half sighing, Juliet looked down; not willing to accept, though hardly able to resist, the offered licence for complaint.
'Make no stranger,' the old Baronet laughingly added, 'of me, I beg! She is my sister-in-law, to be sure; but the law, with all its subtleties, had not yet entailed our affections, with our estates, to our relations; nor articled our tastes, with our jointures, to our dowagers. Use, therefore, no manner of ceremony! How do you bear with her freaks and fancies? or rather,—for that is the essential point, why do you bear with them?'
'Can that,' said Juliet, 'be a question?'
'Not a wise one, I confess!' he returned; 'for what but Necessity could link together two creatures who seem formed to give a view of human nature diametrically opposite the one from the other? These indeed must be imps,—and imps of darkness,—who, busy, busy still—delight