“It was hard that such devotion as mine should not have met with better success. You, my dear Softly, who are fond of that uncomfortable diversion which men call hunting, can scarcely appreciate what I had to undergo; but when I tell you that in addition to unintermitting agitation of mind, I suffered from constant abrasion of body, you will pity, though you cannot sympathise with, my distress. Apprehension, amounting to actual _funk_, is a disagreeable sensation enough; but to be partially flayed alive, and that on portions of the person called into daily use by a man of sedentary habits, amounts to a cruel and unbearable infliction. I wonder whether she ever pitied me! I am inclined to think she scarcely thought about me at all.
“At one time, however, our acquaintance seemed likely to ripen into intimacy; and it happened that at the same period a detachment from a regiment of Hussars was quartered in our neighbourhood. The Captain hunted of course, so did the Lieutenant; and two harder riders never dirtied their coats with the X.Y.Z., nor washed them, when dirty, in the Swimley brook. Also they danced, dined, drank, and flirted, as is the custom of their kind. But the Cornet was an exception to the rule. Strange anomaly! a Cornet of Hussars, who seldom, when off duty, got upon a horse; who did not waltz or give conundrums, or squeeze young ladies’ hands; who retired from mess early, not to smoke nor play whist, nor get into scrapes, but to practise on the pianoforte; whose general appearance was sedate and steady, though, to do him justice, he was a good-looking fellow enough, in a manly Anglo-Saxon style, and, in short, whose whole character and habits appeared more those of a travelling tutor than a dissipated young officer of Dragoons.
“And yet Miss Merlin fell in love with Cornet Brown. Where they met, has always been to me a mystery; and when they did meet, I cannot conceive what they found to talk about, for they had not two ideas in common. He did not even read; for, with all his quiet habits, the Cornet was as ignorant upon most topics of general information, as if he had been the fastest and idlest of his kind. His sole passion was music, and Miss Merlin did not know a note. Nevertheless, she fell in love with him—over head—such a fall as she never had in her life before, even in the Vale. She gave up hunting; she parted with her horses; she altered her whole habits and disposition and appearance, as a woman will, to identify herself the more with the man she loves. A good many of us in that part of the country had entered for the race; but we saw it was all up now—Brown in a canter, and the rest nowhere.