"Dear Sir Arthur,--On Tuesday, the 17th inst, I hold a symposium at
Monkbarns, and pray you to assist thereat, at four o'clock precisely. If
my fair enemy, Miss Isabel, can and will honour us by accompanying you,
my womankind will be but too proud. I have a young acquaintance to make
known to you, who is touched with some stain of a better spirit than
belong to these giddy-paced times, reveres his elders, and has a pretty
notion of the classics. And as such a youth must have a natural contempt
for the people about Fairport, I wish to show him some rational as well
as worshipful society. I am, dear Sir Arthur, etc., etc."

In reply to this, at her father's request, Miss Wardour intimated, "her
own and Sir Arthur's compliments, and that they would have the honour of
waiting upon Mr. Oldbuck. Miss Wardour takes this opportunity to renew
her hostility with Mr. Oldbuck, on account of his long absence from
Knockwinnock, where his visits give so much pleasure."


_II.--The Treacherous Sands_


Sir Arthur and his daughter had set out, on leaving Monkbarns, to return
to Knockwinnock by the turnpike road; but when they discerned Lovel a
little before them Miss Wardour immediately proposed to her father that
they should take another direction, and walk home by the sands.

Sir Arthur acquiesced willingly, and the two left the high road, and
soon attained the side of the ocean. The tide was by no means so far out
as they had computed; but this gave them no alarm; there was seldom ten
days in the year when it approached so near the cliffs as not to leave a