a drone in the hive of society: but in this opinion, as in many others, his son had the misfortune to differ from him; he used frequently to steal into Wilkins's house of an evening, to enjoy the conversation of one who had passed through life with observation, and had known the labour of business without that contraction of soul which it often occasions.
Harriet was commonly of the party, listening with Annesly to her father's discourse, and with Annesly offering her remarks on it. She was not handsome enough to attract notice; but her look was of that complacent sort which gains on the beholder, and pleases from the acknowledgment that it is beneath admiration.
Nor was her mind ill suited to this "Index of the soul." Without that brilliancy which excites the general applause, it possessed those inferior sweetnesses which acquire the general esteem; sincere, benevolent, inoffensive, and unassuming. Nobody talked of the sayings of Miss Wilkins; but every one heard her with pleasure, and her smile was the signal of universal complacency.
Annesly found himself insensibly attached to her by a chain, which had been imposed without art, and suffered without consciousness. During his acquaintance with Harriet, he had come to that period of life, when men are most apt to be impressed with appearances; in fact, he had looked on many a beauty with a rapture which he thought sincere till it was interrupted by the reflexion that she was not Harriet Wilkins; there was a certain indefinable attraction which linked him every day closer to her, and a•tlessness of manner had the effect (which I presume, from their practice, few young ladies believe it to have) of securing the conquest she had gained.
From the wealth which old Annesly was known to possess, his son was, doubtless, in the phrase of the world, a very advantageous match for Miss Wilkins; but when her father discovered the young man to be serious in his attachment to her, he frequently took occasion to suggest, how unequal the small fortune he could leave his daughter, was to the expectations of the son of a man worth 30,000l. and with a frankness peculiar to himself, gave the father to understand, that his son's visits were rather more frequent than was consistent with that track of prudence which the old gentleman would probably mark out for him. The father, however, took little notice of this intelligence; the truth was, that, judging by himself, he gave very little credit to it; because it came from one, who, according to his conception of things