This was not so very easy a question to answer, and occasioned an “Oh!” of some length from the fair lady before she could add, “You ought to be in parliament, or you should have gone into the army ten years ago.”

“That is not much to the purpose now; and as to my being in parliament, I believe I must wait till there is an especial assembly for the representation of younger sons who have little to live on.

No, Miss Crawford,” he added, in a more serious tone, “there are distinctions which I should be miserable if I thought myself without any chance — absolutely without chance or possibility of obtaining — but they are of a different character.”

A look of consciousness as he spoke, and what