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Rh and vanished, leaving the two friends to comment as they would, upon her conduct.

"You have spoilt all with your precipitation," said the uncle.

"Precipitation!—damn it! what would you have? I have been fifty years making up my mind to marry; and now, when I have not a day to lose, you talk of precipitation!" answered the lover, throwing himself into fauteuil.

"But you have not been fifty years making up your mind to marry my niece," said Brandon drily.

"To be refused—positively refused, by a country girl!" continued Mauleverer, soliloquizing aloud, "and that too at my age, and with all my experience!—a country girl without rank, ton, accomplishments!—By God! I don't care if all the world heard it,—for not a soul in the world would ever believe it."

Brandon sat speechless, eyeing the mortified face of the courtier, with a malicious complacency, and there was a pause of several minutes. Sir William then mastering the strange feeling which made him always rejoice in whatever threw