rospects--all
for "poor Joseph." To become the auditor of this reckoning required
more adroitness than the other case; but Calvert was equal to it. He
saw where to differ, where to agree with her. It was a contingency which
admitted of a very dexterous flattery, rather insinuated, however, than
openly declared; and it was thus he conveyed to her that he took the
same view as the others. He knew Loyd was an excellent fellow, far too
good and too moral for a mere scamp like himself to estimate. He was
certain he would turn out respectable, esteemed, and all that. He would
be sure to be a churchwarden, and might be a poor-law guardian; and his
wife would be certain to shine in the same brightness attained by
him. Then stopping, he would heave a low, faint sigh, and turn the
conversation to something about her own attractions or graceful gifts.
How enthusiastically the world of "society" would one day welcome
them--and what a "success" awaited her whenever she was well enough to
endure its fatigue. Now, though all these were only as so many fagots
to the pile of her martyrdom, she delighted to listen to them, and never
wearied of hearing Calvert exalt all the greatness of the sacrifice she
was about to make, and how immeasurably she was above the lot to which
she was going to consign herself.

It is the drip, drip, that eats away the rock, and iteration ever so
faint, will cleave its way at last: so Florry, without in the slightest
degree disparaging Loyd, grew at length to believe, as Calvert assured
her, that "Master Joseph" was the luckiest dog that ever lived, and had
carried off a prize immeasurably above his pretensions.

Miss Grainger, too, found a confessor in their guest: but it will spare
the reader some time if I place before him a letter which Calvert wrote
to one of his most intimate friends a short time after he had taken up
his abode at the villa. The letter will also serve to connect some past
events with the present now before us.

The epistle was addressed Algernon Drayton, Esq., Army and Navy Club,
London, and ran thus:

"My dear Algy,--You are the prince of 'our own
correspondents,' and I thank you, 'imo corde,' if that be
Latin for it, for all you have done for me. I defy the whole
Bar to make out, from your narrative, who killed who, in
that affair at Basle. I know, after the third reading of it,
I fancied that I had been shot through the heart, and then
took pos