riend, his near intimate;
and certes, I did not spare Stockwell. You have seen me in
this part, and you can give me credit for some powers in
playing it.

"'Could that creature ever have been the dear friend of
Joseph' said Milly, as he said good-night.

"'Why not?' I asked. 'They seem made for each other.'

"Florry was to have come out for a sail this morning with
me, but she is not well--I suspect sulky--and has not
appeared. I therefore give you the morning that I meant
for her. Her excuses have amazed me; because, after my last
night's success, and the sorry figure I had succeeded in
presenting L. to her, I half hoped my own chances might be
looking up. In fact, though I have been playing a waiting
game so patiently, to all appearance, I am driven half mad
by self restraint. Come what may, I must end this; besides,
to day is the fourth: on the tenth the steamer from
Alexandria will touch at Malta; L. will therefore be at
Leghorn by the fourteenth, and here two days after--that is
to say, in twelve days more my siege must be raised. If I
were heavily ironed in a felon's cell with the day of my
execution fixed, I could not look to the time with one-half
the heart-sinking I now feel.

"I'd give--what would I not give?--to have you near me,
though in my soul I know all that you'd say; how you'd
preach never minding, letting be, and the rest of it, just
as if I could cut out some other work for myself tomorrow,
and think no more of her. But I cannot. No Drayton, I
cannot, Is it not too hard for the fellow who cut his way
through Lahore with sixteen followers, and made a lane
through her Majesty's light cavalry, to be worsted,
defeated, and disgraced by a young girl, who has neither
rank, riches, nor any remarkable beauty to her share, but is
simply sustained by the resolve that she'll not have me?
Mind, D., I have given her no opportunity of saying this
since I came last here: on the contrary, she would, if
questioned, be ready--I'd swear to it she would--to say,
'Calvert paid me no attentions, nor made any court to me.'
She is very truthful in everything, but who is to say what
her woman's instinct may not have revealed to her of my love?
Has not the woman a man loves always a private key to his
heart, and d