"Constance!" ejaculated Norbourne, "I"
"Ah! I see," interrupted Lord Norbourne, "that you think me even more ambitious than I am. I know that my heiress might look to the highest honours of the peerage, but I prefer yourself to the first duke in the land."
"But, my dear uncle," interrupted Norbourne,—
"No modesty, and no raptures," cried Lord Norbourne, as he turned to the door; "the pastoral and the heroic age are alike past away with me. Besides, your mother expects you; and I do not think that a lady ought to be kept waiting, unless it be at an assignation, and then it is a useful moral lesson."
The door closed after him, and his nephew felt that he had been completely outgeneraled. He now saw, what he had only suspected before, that his uncle wished him to marry Constance.
"Why put such nonsense into her head?" But, even while he spoke, he reproached him-
