Present taste would pronounce this effusion to be extravagant,
rhapsodical, high-flown, super-sentimental, but it did not read so to
Lavinia. It was in the fashion of the times--indeed it approached nearer
modern ideas than the majority of love letters of that day which
generally began with "Madam" without any endearing prefix. Lavinia liked
it none the less because it was not so formal as the letters which some
girls had shown her in all pride and secrecy.

But it troubled her all the same.

"I wonder if I really--really love him," she mused. "I suppose I do or I
shouldn't be continually thinking about him. But to be married--oh,
that's a different thing. Perhaps he'd want to live in the country.
That would be horribly dull, especially if he had to come to London
often. He hopes to be a great lawyer some day he says. I don't think I'd
like him in a wig and gown and white bands. He would look so horribly
old. Oh, but I wouldn't let him have his rooms in the Temple after we're
married. He'll have to burn his musty old books. He won't need them. His
father's very rich. He's told me so hundreds of times."

A half dozen times would have been nearer the mark and this would
probably represent the number of their meetings, once at a ball at
Sadler's Wells Gardens and afterwards at stolen opportunities which the
ingenious Lavinia contrived to bring about.

To tell the honest truth, Lavinia's gallant Archibald Dorrimore, the
young Templar, served only to amuse the young lady. She was not blind to
the fact that he was a fop and not blessed with too much brain. She had
seen many of his sort before and did not trust them. But Dorrimore