etter. You may consider it a very lucky thing that
you came in my way, and a still more lucky thing that Miss Halliday has
been silly enough to fall in love with you. I've heard of men being
born with silver spoons in their mouths; but I should think you must
have come into the world with a whole service of plate. However, that
is neither here nor there. Your policy will be to follow up your
advantages; and if you can persuade the young lady to change her name
for Hawkehurst on the quiet some fine morning, without stopping to ask
permission of her stepfather, or any one else, so much the better for
you, and so much the more agreeable to me. I'd rather do business with
you than with my brother Phil; and I shan't be sorry to cry quits with
that gentleman for the shabby trick he played me a few years ago."

My Sheldon's brow darkened as he said this, and the moody fit returned.
That old grudge which my patron entertains against his brother must
have relation to some very disagreeable business, if I may judge by
George Sheldon's manner.

Here was a position for me, Valentine Hawkehurst, soldier of fortune,
cosmopolitan adventurer, and child of the nomadic tribes who call
Bohemia their mother country! Already blest with the sanction of my
dear love's simple Yorkshire kindred, I was now assured of George
Sheldon's favour; nay, urged onward in my paradisiac path by that
unsentimental Mentor. The situation was almost too much for my
bewildered brain. Charlotte an heiress, and George Sheldon eager to
bring about my participation in the Haygarthian thousands!

And now I sit in my little room 1a Omega-street, pondering upon the
past, and trying to face the perplexities of the future.

Is this to be? Am I, so hopeless an outsider in the race of life, to
come in with a rush and win the prize which Fortune's first favourite
might envy? Can I hope or believe it? Can the Fates have been playing a
pleasant practical joke with me all this time, like those fairies who
decree that the young prince shall pass his childhood and youth in the
guise of a wild boar, only to be transformed into an Adonis at last by
the hand of the woman who is disinterested enough to love him despite
his formidable tusks and ungainly figure?

No! a thousand times no! The woman I love, and the fortune I have so
often desired, are not for me. Every man has his own especial Fates;
and the three sisters who take care of me are grim, hard-visaged,
harder-hearted