dreadful in a lover; but I shall leave you to find that out when he comes."
"You do not mean," cried Ethel, frightened into speaking, "to insist on my fulfilling a contract of which I never heard. Only let me live on quietly with you—I never mean to marry."
"Very proper to say so," returned Mrs. Churchill, with an air of calm approval; "young ladies ought never to consent till they are asked."
"But when I am asked," said Ethel, more impetuously than she had ever said any thing in her life before, "I have only a refusal to give."
"Very right that you should say so now," replied her grandmother; "but let me caution you against taking any foolish fancies into your head, as if you could be allowed the same choice in a husband that you are in a riband."
"I cannot, will not marry him!" sobbed Ethel.
"Do not, my dear child, talk nonsense. You are not aware of the important inter-
