with light associates, and have heard doubtful conversation--Oh! it was
hard that such a one should be chosen, and that the matron should be
deposed to give place to such a Sultana.

All these doubts the widow laid before Pen during the two days which had
of necessity to elapse ere the uncle came down; but he met them with that
happy frankness and ease which a young gentleman exhibits at his time of
life, and routed his mother's objections with infinite satisfaction to
himself. Miss Costigan was a paragon of virtue and delicacy; she was as
sensitive as the most timid maiden; she was as pure as the unsullied
snow; she had the finest manners, the most graceful wit and genius, the
most charming refinement and justness of appreciation in all matters of
taste; she had the most admirable temper and devotion to her father, a
good old gentleman of high family and fallen fortunes, who had lived,
however, with the best society in Europe: he was in no hurry, and could
afford to wait any time,--till he was one-and-twenty. But he felt (and
here his face assumed an awful and harrowing solemnity) that he was
engaged in the one only passion of his life, and that DEATH alone could
close it.

Helen told him, with a sad smile and shake of the head, that people
survived these passions, and as for long engagements contracted between
very young men and old women--she knew an instance in her own family--
Laura's poor father was an instance--how fatal they were.

Mr. Pen, however, was resolved that death must be his doom in case of
disappointment, and rather than this--rather than baulk him, in fact--
this lady would have submitted to any sacrifice or personal pain, and
would have gone down on her knees and have kissed the feet of a Hottentot
daughter-in-law.