instructions in a soil so choaked with self-conceit that it was
utterly impossible they should ever bear any fruit.




BOOK X.

Chapter i.

_To which we will prefix no preface_.


The doctor found Amelia alone, for Booth was gone to walk with his
new-revived acquaintance, Captain Trent, who seemed so pleased with
the renewal of his intercourse with his old brother-officer, that he
had been almost continually with him from the time of their meeting at
the drum.

Amelia acquainted the doctor with the purport of her message, as
follows: "I ask your pardon, my dear sir, for troubling you so often
with my affairs; but I know your extreme readiness, as well as
ability, to assist any one with your advice. The fact is, that my
husband hath been presented by Colonel James with two tickets for a
masquerade, which is to be in a day or two, and he insists so strongly
on my going with him, that I really do not know how to refuse without
giving him some reason; and I am not able to invent any other than the
true one, which you would not, I am sure, advise me to communicate to
him. Indeed I had a most narrow escape the other day; for I was almost
drawn in inadvertently by a very strange accident, to acquaint him