as appointed. The young couple met, and by a curious coincidence (I am told that a look or a finger will put a lover on his guard) the conversation was extremely guarded and general, until after a pause, the listening father heard his daughter exclaim in a tone of high indignation:
“A letter, Mr. Heneage, and clandestinely delivered to me! No, sir, I shall not take it. Anything that I ought to receive, should be sent through my papa or mamma. Take it back, sir. You will not take it. Then I throw it on the ground, and set my foot upon it.“
And Savemake heard a stamp of the little foot. Flora did not know, you see, whether he could see her, or not.
“You had better take up your letter, and go, Mr. Heneage,” proceeded the artless girl. “You do not know the pain you have given me.”
Mr. Heneage remarked something about sorrow and presumption, took up his letter, and departed; and Miss Savernake received some grumbling approbation from her father, and was, at all events, to be left at liberty for the present.
While he was shaving, which he was very careful about, the next morning, a sudden thought crossed Mr. Savernake’s mind, and he cut himself, as the reader may be glad to hear, very severely. It took him some time to abuse his wife, and staunch the blood, and finish dressing; but as soon as those duties were performed, he rushed to Miss Flora’s door, and demanded whether she were dressed. No answer.
Dressed, of course, she was, and looking very pretty — in her hat — by the side of handsome Charles Heneage, in a coupe of the Great Western Railway, and at least fifty miles from London. Charles Heneage had written no letter on the preceding day, but that was no reason against Flora’s writing one, stating her terrors, and mentioning where she would meet him next morning at five, and flinging it — as she remarked — upon the ground, for him to take up. They are a very happy couple, and Charles is making a large income, and going to be called to the bar.
But frantically enraged as was the man with the Heart in the Right Place, at his daughter getting away and being made happy, the incident which perhaps he will remember longer is his purchase of the house in which his childhood had been spent. The kindly-hearted, generous, impulsive Chap, with the heart as aforesaid, had quarelled with his parents at an early age, — had been turned out of their house in town, and sent to be apprenticed in the country; how he broke his indentures, and what subsequent rascalities he performed until he became blessed of Providence— rich and respected — need not be told. We know him as a wealthy man, and he says that he is a good one, and he ought to know.
Mr. Savernake happened to see that the house in which his parents, long since dead, had resided, was for sale. There it was in the advertisement, Number 45, Atherton Street, Russell
Square, W. C. And there mingled with a