recommend Mr. Lovel to your
acquaintance.«
    The young soldier fixed his keen eye upon Lovel, and paid his compliment
with more reserve than cordiality; and as our acquaintance thought his coldness
almost supercilious, he was equally frigid and haughty in making the necessary
return to it; and thus a prejudice seemed to arise between them at the very
commencement of their acquaintance.
    The observations which Lovel made during the remainder of this pleasure
party did not tend to reconcile him with this addition to their society. Captain
M'Intyre, with the gallantry to be expected from his age and profession,
attached himself to the service of Miss Wardour, and offered her, on every
possible opportunity, those marks of attention which Lovel would have given the
world to have rendered, and was only deterred from offering by the fear of her
displeasure. With forlorn dejection at one moment, and with irritated
susceptibility at another, he saw this handsome young soldier assume and
exercise all the privileges of a cavaliere servente. He handed Miss Wardour's
gloves, he assisted her in putting on her shawl, he attached himself to her in
the walks, had a hand ready to remove every impediment in her path, and an arm
to support her where it was rugged or difficult; his conversation was addressed
chiefly to her, and, where circumstances permitted, it was exclusively so. All
this, Lovel well knew, might be only that sort of egotistical gallantry which
induces some young men of the present day to give themselves the air of
engrossing the attention of the prettiest women in company, as if the others
were unworthy of their notice. But he thought he observed in the conduct of
Captain M'Intyre something of marked and peculiar tenderness, which was
calculated to alarm the jealousy of a lover. Miss Wardour also received his
attentions; and although his candour allowed they were of a kind which could not
be repelled without some strain of affectation, yet it galled him to the heart
to witness that she did so.
    The heart-burning which these reflections occasioned proved very indifferent
seasoning to the dry antiquarian discussions with which Oldbuck, who continued
to demand his particular attention, was unremittingly persecuting him; and he
underwent, with fits of impatience that amounted almost to loathing, a course of
lectures upon monastic architecture, in all its styles, from the massive Saxon
to the florid Gothic, and from that to the mixed and composite architecture of
James the First's time, when, according to Oldbuck, all orders were confounded,
and columns of various descriptions arose side by side, or were piled above each
other, as if symmetry