increased, so did my reverie gain ground.

"'Is it not beautiful, Jack?--how delicately worked--it must have taken a
long time to do it.'

"'Seven years,' I muttered, as my thoughts ran upon a very different
topic.

"'Oh, no--not so much,' said she laughing; 'and it must be such a hard
thing to do.'

"'Not half so hard as carding wool, or pounding oyster shells.'

"'How absurd you are. Well, I'll take this, it will look so well in--'

"'Botany Bay,' said I, with a sigh that set all the party laughing, which
at last roused me, and enabled me to join in the joke.

"As, at length, one half of the room became filled with millinery, and
the other glittered with jewels and bijouterie, my wife grew weary with
her exertions, and we found ourselves alone.

"When I told her that my aunt had taken up her residence in Paris, it
immediately occurred to her, how pleasant it would be to go there too;
and, although I concurred in the opinion for very different reasons, it
was at length decided we should do so; and the only difficulty now
existed as to the means, for although the daily papers teem with 'four
ways to go from London to Paris;' they all resolved themselves into one,
and that one, unfortunately to me, the most difficult and impracticable
--by money.

"There was, however, one last resource open--the sale of my commission.
I will not dwell upon what it cost me to resolve upon this--the
determination was a painful one, but it was soon come to, and before
five-o'clock that day, Cox and Greenwood had got their instructions to
sell out for me, and had advanced a thousand pounds of the purchase. Our
bill settled--the waiters bowing to the ground (it is your ruined man
that is always most liberal)--the post-horses harnessed, and impatient
for the road, I took my place beside my wife, while my valet held a
parasol over the soubrette in the rumble, all in the approved fashion of
those who have an unlimited credit with Coutts and Drummond; the whips
cracked, the leaders capered, and with a patronizing bow to the
proprietor of the 'Clarendon,' away we rattled to Dover.

"After the usual routine of sea sickness, fatigue, and poisonous cookery,
we reached Paris on the fifth day, and put up at the 'Hotel de Londres,'
Place Vendome.

"To have an adequate idea of the state of my feelings as I trod the
splendid apartments of this princely Hotel, surrounded by every luxury
that wealth can procure, or taste suggest, you must ima