out of the field.'"

"Stuff and nonsense! If I wasn't as much his superior in talent as in
temperament, I'd fling myself over that rock yonder, and make an end
of it!" After a few seconds' pause he went on: "She may think what she
likes of _me_, but one thing is plain enough--she does not love _him_.
It is the sort of compassionating, commiserating estimate imaginative
girls occasionally get up for dreary depressed fellows,
constituting themselves discoverers of intellect that no one ever
suspected--revealers of wealth that none had ever dreamed of. Don't I
know scores of such who have poetised the most commonplace of men into
heroes, and never found out their mistake till they married them!"

"You always terrify me when you take to predicting, Mr. Calvert"

"Heaven knows, it's not my ordinary mood. One who looks so little into
the future for himself has few temptations to do so for his friends."

"Why do you feel so depressed?"

"I'm not sure that I do feel depressed. I'm irritable, out of sorts,
annoyed if you will; but not low or melancholy. Is it not enough to
make one angry to see such a girl as Florry bestow her affections on
that--Well, I'll not abuse him, but you _know_ he is a 'cad'--that's
exactly the word that fits him."

"It was no choice of mine," she sighed.

"That may be; but you ought to have been more than passive in the
matter. Your fears would have prevented you letting your niece stop for
a night in an unhealthy locality. You'd not have suffered her to halt
in the Pontine Marshes; but you can see no danger in linking her whole
future life to influences five thousand times more depressing. I tell
you, and I tell you deliberately, that she'd have a far better chance of
happiness with a scamp like myself."

"Ah, I need not tell you my own sentiments on that point," said she,
with a deep sigh.

Calvert apparently set little store by such sympathy, for he rose, and
throwing away the end of his cigar, stood looking out over the lake.
"Here comes Onofrio, flourishing some letters in his hand. The idiot
fancies the post never brings any but pleasant tidings."

"Let us go down and meet him," said Miss Grainger; and he walked along
at her side in silence.

"Three for the Signor Capitano," said the boatman, "and one for the
signorina," handing the letters as he landed.

"Drayton," muttered Calvert; "the others are strange to me."

"This is from Joseph. How glad poor Florry will be to get it."