I would shed my heart's
blood for you!" exclaimed the chaplain, squeezing his patron's hand, and
turning a brilliant pair of eyes ceilingwards.

"Oh, Sampson! I tell you I am miserable. With all this play and wine,
whilst I have been here, I tell you I have been trying to drive away
care. I own to you that when we were at Castlewood there were things
passed between a certain lady and me."

The parson gave a slight whistle over his glass of Bordeaux.

"And they've made me wretched, those things have. I mean, you see, that
if a gentleman has given his word, why, it's his word, and he must stand
by it, you know. I mean that I thought I loved her,--and so I do very
much, and she's a most dear, kind, darling, affectionate creature, and
very handsome, too,--quite beautiful; but then, you know, our ages,
Sampson! Think of our ages, Sampson! She's as old as my mother!"

"Who would never forgive you."

"I don't intend to let anybody meddle in my affairs, not Madam Esmond
nor anybody else," cries Harry: "but you see, Sampson, she is old--and,
oh, hang it! Why did Aunt Bernstein tell me----?"

"Tell you what?"

"Something I can't divulge to anybody, something that tortures me!"

"Not about the--the----" the chaplain paused: he was going to say about
her ladyship's little affair with the French dancing-master; about other
little anecdotes affecting her character. But he had not drunk wine
enough to be quite candid, or too much, and was past the real moment of
virtue.

"Yes, yes, every one of 'em false--every one of 'em!" shrieks out Harry.

"Great powers, what do you mean?" asks his friend.

"These, sir, these!" says Harry, beating a tattoo on his own white
teeth. "I didn't know it when I asked her. I swear I didn't know it.
Oh, it's horrible--it's horrible! and it has caused me nights of agony,
Sampson. My dear old grandfather had a set a Frenchman at Charleston
made them for him, and we used to look at 'em grinning in a tumbler, and
when they were out, his jaws used to fall in--I never thought she had
'em."

"Had what, sir?" again asked the chaplain.

"Confound it, sir, don't you see I mean teeth?" says Harry, rapping the
table.

"Nay, only two."

"And how the devil do you know, sir?" asks the young man, fiercely.

"I--I had it from her maid. She had two teeth knocked out by a stone
which cut her lip a little, and they have been replaced."

"Oh, Sampson, do you mean to say they ain't all sham ones?" cries th