he moment of
receiving yours, had a half-finished note on my writing-table asking
you to increase my poor allowance. When I left Castello, I think you had
sixteen horses. Can you possibly want more than two for the carriage and
one for your own riding? As to your garden and greenhouse expenses, I
'll lay ten to one your first peas cost you a guinea a quart, and you
never saw a pine at your table under five-and-twenty pounds; and now
that I am on the theme of reduction, I would ask what do you want with a
chef at two hundred and fifty a year? Do you, or does Ellen, ever eat of
anything but the simplest diet at table? Don't you send away the entrees
every day, wait for the roast gigot, or the turkey, or the woodcocks,
and in consequence, does not Monsieur Gregoire leave the cookery to be
done by one of his "aides," and betake himself to the healthful pursuit
of snipe-shooting, and the evening delight of Mrs. Somebody's tea at
Portshandon? Why not add this useless extravagance to the condemned list
of the vineries, the stables, and the score of other extraordinaires,
which an energetic hand would reduce in half an hour?

I 'm sure you 'll not take it in ill part that I bring these things
under your notice. Whether out of the balance in hand you will give
me five hundred a year, or only three, I shall ever remain Your
affectionate brother,

Temple Edgerton Bramleigh.

"Read that, Nelly," said Augustus, as he threw it across the table. "I
'm almost afraid to say what I think of it."

This was said as they sat in their little lodgings in the Rue des
Moines; for the letter had been sent through an embassy bag, and
consequently had been weeks on the road, besides lying a month on a tray
in the Foreign Office till some idle lounger had taken the caprice to
forward it.

"Her Majesty's Legation at Naples. Lord Culduff is there special, and
Temple is acting as secretary to him."

"And does Marion send no message?"

"Oh, yes. She wants all the trunks and carriage-boxes which she left at
Castello to be forwarded to town for transmission abroad. I don't think
she remembers us much further. She hopes I will not have her old mare
sold, but make arrangements for her having a free paddock for the rest
of her life; and she adds that you ought to take the pattern of the
slipper on her side-saddle, for if it should happen that you ever ride
again, you 'll find it better than any they make now."

"Considerate, at all events. They te