indication of unreality. I must add that if the future had
presented itself to me with prophetic distinctness, my love for
Melissa was so great that I should not have hesitated. My frequent
visits to B. had not passed unnoticed at A., and the reason was
suspected. Hints were not wanting, and the custom-house surveyor
told me a harrowing tale of a fellow-surveyor who had alienated all
his friends and had been obliged to leave his house near Tower Hill
because he had chosen to marry the daughter of a poor author who
lived in Whitefriars. One day early in the morning I was in B. and
met the squire's young ladies with their mother. She was a very
proud dame. Her maiden name was Bone, and her father had been a
sugar-baker in Bristol, but this was not a retail trade, and she had
often told me that she was descended from Geoffrey de Bohun, who was
in the retinue of William the Conqueror and killed five Saxons with
his own hand at the battle of Hastings. Her children, she bade me
observe, had inherited the true Bohun ears as shown in an engraving
she possessed of a Bohun tomb in Normandy. I walked with the party
up the High Street, and had not gone far when I saw Melissa coining
towards us. O, Mr. Rambler, can I utter it! She approached us, she
knew that I must have recognised her, but I turned my head towards a
shop-window and called my companions' attention to the display of
silks and satins. After Melissa had passed, my lady asked me if
that was not the watchmaker's daughter and whether I knew anything
about her. I replied that I believed it was, and that I had heard
she was a respectable young woman. My lady remarked that she had
understood that she was virtuous, but that she had been unbecomingly
brought up, and considered herself superior to her position. Her
ladyship confessed that she would not be surprised any day to hear
that Miss -----had been obliged to leave B., for she had noticed
that when a female belonging to the lower orders strove to acquire