out to her that she ought as a christian to reconcile herself to the sacrifice especially as it was so uncertain and to bear no feeling towards me as to myself i give you my word i felt a perfect bird of prey towards the family the sisters took your part i hope why i can t say they did he returned when we had comparatively reconciled mrs to it we had to break it to you recollect my mentioning as the one that has something the matter with her perfectly she clenched both her hands said looking at me in dismay shut her eyes turned lead color became perfectly stiff and took nothing for two days but toast and water administered with a what a very unpleasant girl i remarked oh i beg your pardon said she is a very charming girl but she has a great deal of feeling in fact they all have told me afterwards that the self reproach she while she was in attendance upon no words could describe i know it must have been severe by my own feelings which were like a criminal s after was restored we still had to break it to the other eight and it produced various effects upon them of a most pathetic nature the two little ones whom have only just left off de me at any rate they are all reconciled to it now i hope said i ye � yes i should say they were on the whole resigned to it said doubtfully the fact is we avoid mentioning the subject and my unsettled prospects and indifferent circumstances are a great consolation to them there will be a deplorable scene whenever we are married it will be much more like a funeral than a wedding and they all hate me for taking her away his honest face as he looked at me with a comic shake of his head me more in the remembrance than it did in the reality for i was by this time in a state of such excessive and wandering of mind as to be quite unable to fix my attention on anything on our approaching the house where the i was at such a in respect of my personal looks and presence of mind that proposed a gentle in the form of a glass of ale this having been administered at a neighbouring public house he conducted me with tottering steps to the s door i had a vague sensation of being as it were on view when the maid opened it and of wavering somehow across a hall with a weather glass in it into a quiet little drawing room on the ground floor commanding a neat garden also of sitting down here on a sofa and seeing s hair start up now his hat was removed like one of those little figures made of springs that fly out of snuff boxes when the lid is taken off also of hearing an old fashioned clock away on the e e the personal history and experience chimney piece and trying to make it keep time to the of my heart � which it wouldn t also of looking round the room for any sign of and seeing none also of thinking that once in the distance and was instantly choked by somebody ultimately i found myself into the fire place and bowing in great confusion to two dry little elderly ladies dressed in black and each looking wonderfully like a preparation in or tan of the late mr pray said one of the two little ladies be seated when i had done tumbling over and had sat upon something which was not a cat � my first seat was � i so far recovered my sight as to perceive that mr had evidently been the youngest of the family that there was a of six or eight years between the two sisters and that the younger appeared to be the manager of the conference inasmuch as she had my letter in her hand � so familiar as it looked to me and yet so odd � and was referring to it through an they were dressed alike but this sister wore her dress with a more youthful air than the other and perhaps had a trifle more or or or or some little thing of that kind which made her look more lively they were both upright in their carriage formal precise composed and quiet the sister who had not my letter had her arms crossed on her breast and resting on each other like an idol mr i believe said the sister who had got my letter addressing herself to this was a frightful beginning had to indicate that i was mr and i had to lay claim to myself and they had to themselves of a opinion that was mr and altogether we were in a nice condition to improve it we all distinctly heard give two short and receive another choke mr said the sister with the letter i did something � bowed i suppose � and was all attention when the other sister struck in my sister said she being with matters of this nature will state what we consider most calculated to promote the happiness of both parties i discovered afterwards that miss was an authority in affairs of the heart by reason of there having existed a certain mr who played short and was supposed to have been of her my private opinion is that this was entirely a assumption and that was altogether innocent of any such sentiments � to which he had never given any sort of expression that i could ever hear of both miss and miss had a superstition however that he would have declared his passion if he had not been cut short in his youth at about sixty by over drinking his constitution and an attempt to set 