He was a Scottish viscount who had just been created a baron of the united kingdom, and his age was precisely that of my own.

Here was a rival to excite distrust.

By a singular contradiction in sentiments, the more I dreaded his power to injure me, the more I undervalued his means.

While I fancied Anna was merely playing with me, and had in secret made up her mind to be a peeress, I had no doubt that the subject of her choice was both ill-favored and awkward, and had cheek-bones like a Tartar.

While reading of the great antiquity of his family (which reached obscurity in the thirteenth century), I set it down as established that the first of his unknown predecessors was a bare-legged thief, and, at the very moment that I imagined Anna was smiling on him, and retracting her coquettish denial, I could have sworn that he spoke with an unintelligible border accent, and that he had red hair! The torment of such pictures grew to be intolerable, and I rushed into the open air for relief.