incessantly, swearing that he would not be beaten. I told him his
efforts were useless, but thought them friendly, and so they were, only
Janet's resistance had fired his vanity, and he stalked up and down my
room talking a mixture of egregious coxcombry and hearty good sense that
might have shown one the cause he meant to win had become personal to
him. Temple, who was sometimes in consultation with him, and was always
amused by his quasi-fanfaronade, assured me that Herriot was actually
scheming. The next we heard of him was, that he had been seen at a
whitebait hotel down the river drunk with Edbury. Janet also heard of
that, and declined to see Heriot again.

Our last days marched frightfully fast. Janet had learnt that any the
most distant allusion to her marriage day was an anguish to the man who
was not to marry her, so it was through my aunt Dorothy that I became
aware of Julia Bulsted's kindness in offering to take charge of my father
for a term. Lady Sampleman undertook to be hostess to him for one night,
the eve of Janet's nuptials. He was quiet, unlikely to give annoyance to
persons not strongly predisposed to hear sentences finished and
exclamations fall into their right places.

Adieu to my darling! There have been women well won; here was an
adorable woman well lost. After twenty years of slighting her, did I
fancy she would turn to me and throw a man over in reward of my ultimate
recovery of my senses?--or fancy that one so tenacious as she had proved
would snap a tie depending on her pledged word? She liked Edbury; she
saw the best of him, and liked him. The improved young lord was her
handiwork. After the years of humiliation from me, she had found herself
courted by a young nobleman who clung to her for help, showed
improvement, and brought her many compliments from a wondering world.
She really felt that she was strength and true life to him. She resisted