I expect you will receive him as a particular friend of mine." "With all my heart--so you will engage, after this visit, to keep him down with your other particular friends at the Well--you know it is a bargain that you bring neither buck nor pointer into my parlour--the one worries my cat, and the other my temper." "You mistake me entirely, Clara--this is a very different visitor from any I have ever introduced to you--I expect to see him often here, and I hope you and he will be better friends than you think of.

I have more reasons for wishing this, than I have now time to tell you." Clara remained silent for an instant, then looked at her brother with an anxious and scrutinizing glance, as if she wished to penetrate into his inmost purpose.
"If I thought,"-- she said, after a minute's consideration, and with an altered and disturbed tone; "but no--I will not think that Heaven intends me such a blow--least of all, that it should come from your hands." She walked hastily to the window, and threw it open--then shut it again, and returned to her seat, saying, with a constrained smile, "May Heaven forgive you, brother, but you frightened me heartily." "I did not mean to do so, Clara," said Mowbray, who saw the necessity of soothing her; "I only alluded in joke to those chances that are never out of other girls' heads, though you never seem to calculate on them." "I wish you, my dear John," said Clara, struggling to regain entire composure, "I wish _you_ would profit by my example, and give up the science of chance also--it will not avail you." "How d'ye know that ?--I'll show you the contrary, you silly wench," answered Mowbray--"Here is a banker's bill, payable to your own order, for the cash you lent me, and something over--don't let old Mick have the fingering, but let Bindloose manage it for you--he is the honester man between two d----d knaves." "Will not you, brother, send it to the man Bindloose yourself ?" "No,--no," replied Mowbray--"he might confuse it with some of my transactions, and so you forfeit your stake." "Well, I am glad you are able to pay me, for I want to buy Campbell's new work." "I wish you joy of your purchase--but don't scratch me for not caring about it--I know as little of books as you of the long odds.

And come now, be serious, and tell me if you will be a good girl--lay aside your whims, and receive this English young nobleman like a lady as you are ?" "That were easy," said Clara--"but--but--Pray, ask no more of me than just to see him .-- Say to him at once, I am a poor creature in body, in mind, in spirits, in temper, in understanding--above all, say that I can receive him only once." "I shall say no such thing," said Mowbray, bluntly; "it is good to be plain with you at once--I thought of putting off this discussion--but since it must come, the sooner it is over the better .-- You are to understand, Clara Mowbray, that Lord Etherington has a particular view in this visit, and that his view has my full sanction and approbation." "I thought so," said Clara, in the same altered tone of voice in which she had before spoken; "my mind foreboded this last of misfortunes!--But, Mowbray, you have no child before you--I neither will nor can see this nobleman." "How!" exclaimed Mowbray, fiercely; "do you dare return me so peremptory an answer ?--Think better of it, for, if we differ, you will find you will have the worst of the game." "Rely upon it," she continued, with more vehemence, "I will see him nor no man upon the footing you mention--my resolution is taken, and threats and entreaties will prove equally unavailing." "Upon my word, madam," said Mowbray, "you have, for a modest and retired young lady, plucked up a goodly spirit of your own!--But you shall find mine equals it.

If you do not agree to see my friend Lord Etherington, ay, and to receive him with the politeness due to the consideration I entertain for him, by Heaven! Clara, I will no longer regard you as my father's daughter.

Think what you are giving up--the affection and protection of a brother--and for what ?--merely for an idle point of etiquette .-- You cannot, I suppose, even in the workings of your romantic brain, imagine that the days of Clarissa Harlowe and Harriet Byron are come back again, when women were married by main force?
and it is monstrous vanity in you to suppose that Lord Etherington, since he has honoured you with any thoughts at all, will not be satisfied with a proper and civil refusal--You are no such prize, methinks, that the days of romance are to come back for you." "I care not what days they are," said Clara--"I tell you I will not see Lord Etherington, or any one else, upon such preliminaries as you have stated--I cannot--I will not--and I ought not .-- Had you meant me to receive him, which can be a matter of no consequence whatever, you should have left him on the footing of an ordinary visitor--as it is, I will not see him." "You _shall_ see and hear him both," said Mowbray; "you shall find me as obstinate as you are--as willing to forget I am a brother, as you to forget that you have one." "It is time, then," replied Clara, "that this house, once our father's, should no longer hold us both.