Page:The Ladies' Cabinet of Fashion, Music & Romance 1832.pdf/94

Rh Miss Lucy-I'll fight for you as long as I can stand. "At this juncture, the door again opened, and the stranger stood before them. The cloak fell from his shoulders, and Lucy Atherton rushed into his arms. "Dear Lucy!" "Dear Charles!" was all they could utter. Mrs. Atherton glided out of the room. "The old lady does not like you either," thought Johnny;" she served me just so."

" Three are poor company," continued Johnny to himself, and he too retired ; but he had the consolation of believing that he had found a complete solution of the mystery of the young lady's conduct in the morning. " She would never ,' he argued, " have refused me, and three hundred pounds, and the bake-shop, if she hadn't been engaged already. She was sorry about it, no doubt, though she did pretend not to mind it. Dear me, what a pity ! the poor thing laughed so, and was so overjoyed when I went there a- courting to-day, and now this mysterious stranger has come from nobody knows where, to carry her off. Well, she knows her own business best. Three hundred pounds won't go a begging long in Hookam. So good-by to Lucy Atherton."

But manfully as our hero strove against his disappointment, it preyed upon him, and for two days he remained in his own house quite disconsolate, moping about lake a hypocondriac, and poking the fire with the petulance of a bachelor who is past hope, or past forty. At the end of that time he received an unexpected visit from the stranger. Stripped of his cloak, and disarmed of those ferocious weapons which had excited our hero's curiosity so strongly, he seemed another person. Although somewhat above the ordinary stature, his person was slender and genteel ; his face, which was browned by exposure to the weather, was remarkably handsome, and his address frank and easy. His age might have been two or three and twenty, but having already mixed with the world, and felt the touch of care, he had the manners of an older man. " Mr. Anson," said he, " you guided me into the village the other evening, when I was tired and perhaps less sociable than I ought to have been, and I have called to thank you for your civility, and to request the pleasure of your company on tomorrow evening at Mrs. Atherton's. " Johnny pleaded his black coat, and tried to beg off ; for he had heard it whispered that Lucy was to give her hand to the handsome stranger, and felt but little inclination to be present at the wedding. His visiter, however, pressed him, adding, " Miss Atherton""esteems you as " I will go, one of her earliest friends, and will have it so.