A man cannot marry his own niece.

"I've just brought you a new niece.

After this he took into his house, quite undisguisedly, his own niece,Julia, that is to say.

" "And did she take them, uncle?" asked his niece, in a little surprise.

" There was Magdalena Willmann, a singer, whom he as a youth befriended and proposed to in later days, only to be refused, "because he was very ugly and half crazy," as she told her niece.

That he loved her niece she suspected from the first fortnight of their acquaintance, and it had given additional stimulus to her investigation into his character; but to doubt it, after stepping between her and death, would have been to have mistaken human nature.

Her first trip was to Aunt Jane's own private garden, where the invalid, who had not seen her niece since the accident, had asked her to come.

"Come to see Jane, you know, but hadn't any idea I'd find two nieces.

This lord, howe'er, did all that mortal elf Could do, to keep his treasure to himself: Stay'd much at home, and when in luckless hour His state affairs would drag him from his tower, Left with his spouse a niece himself had bred, To be the partner of her board and bed; And one old priest, a barren lump of clay, To chant their mass, and serve them day by day.

Lord Plotwell warmly welcomes his nephew home, and proceeds to unfold his design of giving him his niece Diana in marriage.

"That, my dear," he informed his niece, "will depend upon how many subscribers you can get.

I do not think, however, that any influence I can exert on Mr Brandon would induce him to allow you to address his niece if he is opposed to it, and I am sure he would have a very strange opinion of me if I attempted such a thing.

He knew Mr Croft to be a young man of good family and very comfortable fortune, and he liked him very much when he had him there to dinner, but he did not wish his niece to go galloping around the country with him.

Whimsical Major Doyle often called Uncle John's nieces "the Three Graces"; but Beth was by odds the beauty of them all.

He placed his niece Francesca in a convent till the time that she should marry, repaid her dowry to the widow Bartolommea, and provided for the expenses of his nephew Lionardo.

" "And you, Beth?" "Really, Uncle John, the thing is not worth worrying over," replied his niece.

The Bishop, who kept two nieces in the episcopal seraglio, would willingly have pardoned his secretary if he had been accused of immorality, but he could not carry his condescension so far as heresy.

I never knew she hed any nieces, 'cept them two gals uv Jedge Hildreth's down ter Marlborough.

" When it was all over, and the young people had driven away to begin the journey of life together, the little man put a loving arm around Beth and Patsy and said, between smiles and tears: "Well, my dears, I've lost one niece, and that's a fact; but I've still two left.

Most of the Colebrook Dale Friends were present, and further converse with Priscilla Gurney induced her niece to resolve openly to conform to Quaker customs, though at what precise time she became professedly a Friend we are not told.

She penned advertisements wildly and summoned her niece.

Mrs. Wilson, unwilling any one but herself should witness this first burst of grief, succeeded in getting her niece to her own room and in bed.

" Reassured by Mr. Thomas, Clarence Luzerne decided that he would ask Dr. Harcourt's permission to visit his niece, a request which was readily granted and he determined if she would consent that she should be his wife.

[Illustration: A very pretty pair] "A very pretty pair," said more than one of the assembled company, as the two took their places in the beautifully decorated ball-room; and as the dance progressed, Mr. Jeffrey Merridew, watching his niece from his post of observation, said to himself with, a congratulatory smile, "Where now are Miss Sibyl's fine rebel principles?

Mr. and Mrs. Palmer had tried to persuade their niece and her chums to stay still longer, but they were firm in their determination to cover the two hundred milesmore or lessin the specified time.