e of the larger gems in England. St Petersburg and Vienna
are as good markets, and safer.

"El. J. has already told you of our escape into Cashmere:
make him narrate the capture of Mansergh, and how he found
the Keyserbagh necklace under his saddle. A Queen's officer
looting! Only think of the enormity! Did it not justify
those proceedings in which Instinct anticipated the finding
of a court-martial? The East, and its adventures--a very
bulky roll, I assure you--must wait till we meet; and in my
next I shall say where, and how, and when: for there is much
that I shall tell that I could not write even to you,
Algernon. Respect my delicacy, and be patient.

"I know you are impatient to hear why I am not nearer
England--even at Paris--and I am just as impatient to tell
you. The address of this will show you where I am. All the
writing in the world could not tell you why. No, Drayton; I
lie awake at night, questioning, questioning, and in vain. I
have gone to the nicest anatomy of my motives, dissecting
fibre by fibre, and may I be--a Queen's officer--if I can
hit upon an explanation of the mystery. The nearest I can
come is, that I feel the place dangerous to me, and,
therefore, I cling to it. I know well the feeling that would
draw a man back to the spot where he had committed a great
crime. Blood is a very glutinous fluid, and has most
cohesive properties; but here, in this place, I have done
no enormities, and why I hug this coast, except that it be a
lee-shore, where shipwreck is very possible, I really cannot
make out Not a bit in love? No, Algy. It is not easy for a
man like me to fall in love. Love demands a variety of
qualities, which have long left me, if I ever had them. I
have little trustfulness, no credulity; I very seldom look
back, never look forward; I neither believe in another, nor
ask belief in myself. I have seen too much of life to be a
dreamer--reality with me denies all place to mere romance.
Last of all I cannot argue from the existence of certain
qualities in a woman to the certainty of her possessing
fifty others that I wish her to have. I only believe what I
see, and my moral eyes are affected with cataract; and yet,
with all this, there's a girl here--the same, ay, the same,
I told you of long ago--t