"'Domestic felicity'—bah! What are you writing about?" yawned Belle. "I'd as soon take to teetotalism: however, it'll tell in the advertisement. Bravo, Tom, that will do. Address it to 'L. C., care of Mrs. Greene, confectioner, St. Giles Street, Norwich.' Miss Patty'll take the letters in for me, though not if she knew their errand. Tip seven-and-sixpence with it, and send it to the Daily Pryer."
We did send it to the Daily, and in that broadsheet we all of us read it two mornings after.
MARRIAGE.—A Bachelor, an Officer of the Queen's, of considerable personal attractions, and in the flower of his age, is desirous of meeting a young lady of beauty, accomplishments, and good family, who, feeling as he does the want of a kindred heart and sympathetic soul, will accord him the favor either of a letter or an interview, as a preliminary to the greatest step in life. The advertiser being a man of some present and still more prospective wealth, requires no fortune, the sole objects of his search being love and domestic felicity. Address, L. C., care of Mrs. Greene, confectioner, St. Giles Street, Norwich.
"Whose advertisement do you imagine that is?" said Fairlie, showing the Daily to Geraldine, as he sat with her and her sisters under some lilac and larch trees in one of the meadows of Fern Chase, which had had the civility, Geraldine said, to yield a second crop of hay expressly for her to have the pleasure of making it. She leaned down towards him as he lay on the grass, and read the advertisement, looking uncommonly pretty in her dainty muslin dress, with its fluttering mauve ribbons, and a wreath she had just twisted up, of bluebells and pinks and white heaths which Fairlie had gathered as he lay, put on her bright hair. We called her a little flirt, but I think she was an unintentional one; at least, her agaceries were, all as unconscious as they were—her worst enemies (i. e. plain young ladies) had to allow—unaffected.
"How exquisitely sentimental! Is it yours?" she asked, with demure mischief.
"Mine!" echoed Fairlie, with supreme scorn.
"It's some one's here, because the address is at Mrs. Greene's. Come, tell me at once, monsieur."
"The only fool in the Artillery," said Fairlie, curtly: "Belle Courtenay."
"Captain Courtenay!" echoed Geraldine, with a little flush on her cheeks, caused, perhaps, by the quick glance the Colonel shot at her as he spoke.
"Captain Courtenay!" said Katherine Vane. "Why, what can he want with a wife? I thought he had l'embarras de choix offered him in that line; at least, so he makes out himself."