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 Half smiling, half sighing, Juliet looked down; not willing to accept, though hardly able to resist, the offered licence for complaint.

"Make no stranger," the old Baronet laughingly added, "of me, I beg! She is my sister-in-law, to be sure; but the law, with all its subtleties, had not yet entailed our affections, with our estates, to our relations; nor articled our tastes, with our jointures, to our dowagers. Use, therefore, no manner of ceremony! How do you bear with her freaks and fancies? or rather,—for that is the essential point, why do you bear with them?"

"Can that," said Juliet, "be a question?"

"Not a wise one, I confess!" he returned; "for what but Necessity could link together two creatures who seem formed to give a view of human nature diametrically opposite the one from the other? These indeed must be imps,