"My dear child, why did you not answer me?" asked a quiet-looking, elderly woman, entering her room. "I have been seeking you every where."
"Dear aunt Dorcas," said Minnie, throwing her arms tenderly round her neck; "I was afraid to reply, for my uncle and aunt Sylvia are in the garden--_not_ alone either--and they would have heard me."
"Who is there with them at this early hour, dear?" As she spoke she released the girl's arms, and seated her beside herself on a couch, affectionately holding both her little white hands.
"Oh!" rejoined Minnie, "that horrid Marmaduke Burton, and Mr. Dalby, the lawyer; and I dislike them both so much, _as they appear now_."
"Oh! why--as--as--lovers. No, not lovers--suitors."
"Where's the distinction, Minnie?" asked her aunt, smiling.
Minnie looked down and blushed; then, looking up half timidly in the other's face, replied, "I think a man may take it into his head to pay you attention, wishing to marry you, but he does not love you for all that; and I think, if a man _really_ loved you, he wouldn't talk so much about it. Mr. Burton says he's dying for love,"--here she smiled roguishly, and peeped up in her aunt's face; "and he certainly has nothing of death from grief about him!"
"Well, the lawyer--what is your objection there?"
"Oh, he's ten thousand times more objectionable! Mr. Burton is only a commonplace squire, looking like one in his top-boots, talking like one, and with a loud voice proclaiming himself lord of the manor, rooks, hounds, horses, and whippers-in! I don't think he's a bad man, yet there is something unreadable too about him, which debars confidence in his goodness; but he's a very disagreeable person, always reminding me of aunt Sylvia's glass of bark in the morning--an amiable invention, but most unpleasant to the palate. But Mr. Dalby,--oh! he's quite another thing!--_thing_ he is; too finical to be a man, too useless to be a woman, he is a compound of mock sentiment and unamiability; he drawls out his words, looking you sideways in the face, never giving you a bold, earnest look; he treats you like a sugar-plumb, and seems afraid of melting you by the fervour of a full-face regard, and he never has a kind or charitable word for any one; he's an insinuating creature, but not _in my case_, as he endeavours to be."