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Douglases rolled home in their family coach.

"Pray, may I ask, Mr. Douglas, if you thought that a pleasant dinner?" said his wife in an insidious tone.

"Yes, my dear, I did indeed; good cookery, pleasant company, and very pretty women—I ask nothing more. Ought not I to have liked it?"

"Oh dear, yes! I am glad you did; easily pleased, that's all I can say. Perhaps, too, you thought your beauty. Lady Eskdale, looked well in that floppety cap?"

"I have not the good fortune to know what a floppety cap is, my dear; but I thought she looked very handsome, even by the side of those two pretty daughters of hers."

"Well, it is to me the strangest delusion of yours, that about the beauty of the Eskdales. Perhaps, too, in the extremity of your benevolence, you think Lord Teviot is very much in love with Helen?"

"Is not he? I took it for granted that he was, because, in the first place, most men who saw her would be; and in the next, because I presume he would not marry her if he were not."

"What his reasons may be for marrying her I do not know; but I never saw a more unpromising-looking business than that. He seems to me to be about the most ill-tempered, disagreeable, odious young man I ever saw; and he does not care two straws for Helen. Girls, I am sure you must have observed it: he never spoke to her at dinner, and I am convinced she is very unhappy."

"Oh, mamma, do you think so?" said Eliza. "I