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chase. It terminated favourably for the animal pursued. Sir Walcot managed to give his enemies the slip, after a harder run, in the character of the fox, than he had ever had as fox-hunter. He was safe for the present. But if there were something ludicrous in this degrading position of the "mighty hunter," there was the opposite in the state of his mansion and of his sisters. It was given up to creditors, they were driven for shelter to the house of the village curate. Harriet had begun laughingly, but she ended with a sigh for the poor Misses Downes; and yet, she said, it was strange they were not nearly so much pitied in the village as Lord Woreham's sisters.

"There is," answered her father, echoing her sigh, "something in a title which imposes on the vulgar; they look on it as a kind of patent of exemption from the common changes and ills of life; they are, therefore, more surprised to find my Lady So-and-so without a home than Miss Such-a-one, and

they bestow on her a larger share of their compassion. But what will these poor Miss Downes do, do they say?"

"Go to India, I hear, when Lady Ann Nidley goes, for she has determined on going. They have an uncle, a colonel, there."

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What an effect on Mr. Aveley did these words produce! He sank into a reverie in which his mind wandered far from the village and its gossip, and far from the present time. At first much of his own past life mingled in his thoughts, but afterwards they were all concentrated on his daughter's future. She was almost startled, when, suddenly breaking his long silence, he said, as if the conversation had not been interrupted: "And you, also, have an uncle in India, a colonel."

Harriet had merely heard him say that he had a brother in that country; she knew nothing of his occupation or fortune. How great was her surprise when he followed up the observation by the question, "Should

VOL. I.

F.

you not like to go out there to an uncle, a colonel, a rich man ?"

"And get married, papa, for you know it young ladies go to India?"

is for that

"And get married, my dear; I see no harm in such a consummation."

"I did not believe you could ever have been brought to think of trying whether your daughter be marketable or not in that kind of way," she replied; and she continued to take his remarks in a vein of raillery.

At length he made her serious, by requesting her to be serious and candid in answering one question. It concerned the person who had been the subject of their conversation at its commencement-Hardy. The intrepid, manly character of the youth, the early ripeness of his talents, made him well fitted to be her companion through life. Her father more than once suspected that she had become so much attached to him that her happiness might be affected by the remembrance of one whom probably she

would never see again. He asked her simply was it so. With simplicity, with a blush, but with perfect good faith, she replied that it was not. Then she acknowledged that it might have been, had he been longer with them, had he continued what he was, and had he proffered his affection.

"I could not, you know, dear father," she added, "give my love when I did not know that any love had been given to me. And he has only written to us three times in two years, and all about business and politics; certainly his letters are not at all intended for me."

"Certainly not, my love. You make me very happy by what you say; so I may yet talk to you about the Indian market; you could be persuaded to try it, I think?"

"Indeed yes, papa," she exclaimed, as if struck by a sudden thought, "if the voyage would do your health good! but I thought you were only jesting about my going to sell myself to the highest bidder."

He laughed, dropped the subject, and

asked her to read to him.

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