se," added he, with a bitter smile,
"it is my fate always to be on the beaten side, and I'd not know how to
comport myself as a winner."

"There's Milly making a signal to us. Is it dinnertime already?" said
she.

"Ay, my last dinner here!" he muttered. She turned her head away and did
not speak.

On that last evening at the villa nothing very eventful occurred. All
that need be recorded will be found in the following letter, which
Calvert wrote to his friend Drayton, after he had wished his hosts a
good-night, and gained his room, retiring, as he did, early, to be up
betimes in the morning and catch the first train for Milan.

"Dear Drayton,--I got your telegram, and though I suspect
you are astray in your 'law,' and don't believe these
fellows can touch me, I don't intend to open the question,
or reserve the point for the twelve judges, but mean to
evacuate Flanders at once; indeed, my chief difficulty was
to decide which way to turn, for having the whole world
before me where to choose, left me in that indecision which
the poet pronounces national when he says,

I am an Englishman, and naked I stand here,
Musing in my mind what raiment I shall wear!

Chance, however, has done for me what my judgment could not
I have been up to Milan and had a look through the
newspapers, and I see what I have often predicted has
happened The Rajahs of Bengal have got sick of their
benefactors, and are bent on getting rid of what we love to
call the blessings of the English rule in India. Next to a
society for the suppression of creditors, I know of no
movement which could more thoroughly secure my sympathy. The
brown skin is right. What has he to do with those covenanted
and uncovenanted Scotchmen who want to enrich themselves by
bullying him? What need has he of governors-general,
political residents, collectors and commanders-in-chief?
Could he not raise his indigo, water his rice-fields, and
burn his widow, without any help of ours? particularly as
our help takes the shape of taxation and vexatious
interference.

"I suppose all these are very unpatriotic sentiments; but
in the same proportion that Britons never will be slaves,
they certainly have no objection to make others such, and I
shudder in the very marrow of my morality to think that but
for the ac