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 had been forgotten, and the elemental principles of art resolved into their primitive confusion.
"What can be more cutting to the heart than the sight of evils," said Oldbuck, in rapturous enthusiasm, "which we are compelled to behold, while we do not possess the power of remedying them ?" Lovel answered by an involulatary groan.

"I see, my dear young friend, and most congenial spirit, that you feel these enormities almost as much as I do.

Have you ever approached them, or met them, without longing to tear, to deface, what is so dishonourable ?" "Dishonourable!" echoed Lovel--"in what respect dishonourable ?" "I mean, disgraceful to the arts." "Where?
how ?" "Upon the portico, for example, of the schools of Oxford, where, at immense expense, the barbarous, fantastic, and ignorant architect has chosen to represent the whole five orders of architecture on the front of one building." By such attacks as these, Oldbuck, unconscious of the torture he was giving, compelled Lovel to give him a share of his attention,--as a skilful angler, by means of his line, maintains an influence over the most frantic movements of his agonized prey.
They were now on their return to the spot where they had left the carriages; and it is inconceivable how often, in the course of that short walk, Lovel, exhausted by the unceasing prosing of his worthy companion, mentally bestowed on the devil, or any one else that would have rid him of hearing more of them, all the orders and disorders of architecture which had been invented or combined from the building of Solomon's temple downwards.

A slight incident occurred, however, which sprinkled a little patience on the heat of his distemperature.
Miss Wardour, and her self-elected knight companion, rather preceded the others in the narrow path, when the young lady apparently became desirous to unite herself with the rest of the party, and, to break off her tete-a-tete with the young officer, fairly made a pause until Mr.Oldbuck came up.