spinsters, not to be mollified by propitiation, or by
the smooth tongue of the flatterer. The cup is very sweet, and it seems
almost within my grasp; but between that chalice of delight and the
lips that thirst for it, ah, what a gulf!

_Nov. 13th_. The above was written late at night, and under the
influence of my black dog. What an ill-conditioned cur he is, and how
he mouths and mangles the roses that bestrew his pathway, always bent
upon finding the worm at the core!

I kicked the brute out of doors this morning, on finding a letter from
my dear one lying in my plate. "Avaunt, aroint thee, foul fiend!" I
cried. "Thou art the veritable poodle in whose skin Mephistopheles
hides when bent on direst mischief. I will set the sign of the cross
upon my threshold, and thou shalt enter no more."

This is what I said to myself as I tore open Charlotte's envelope, with
its pretty little motto stamped on cream-coloured sealing-wax, "_Pensez
a moi._" Ah, love; "while memory holds a seat in this distracted
globe." I saw the eyes of my friend Horatio fixed upon me as I opened
my letter, and knew that my innermost sentiments were under inspection.
Prudence demands all possible caution where the noble Captain is
concerned. I cannot bring myself to put implicit faith in his account
of his business at Ullerton. He may have been there, as he says, on
some promoting spec; but our meeting in that town was, to say the
least, a strange coincidence, and I am not a believer in
coincidences--off the stage, where a gentleman invariably makes his
appearance directly his friends begin to talk about him.

I cannot forget my conviction that Jonah Goodge was bought over by a
rival investigator, and that Rebecca Haygarth's letters were tampered
with; nor can I refrain from connecting that shapely but well-worn
lavender glove with the person of my dandy friend, Horatio Paget. The
disappearance of a letter from the packet intrusted to me by Miss
Judson is another mysterious circumstance; nor can I do away with the
impression that I heard the name Meynell distinctly pronounced by
Philip Sheldon the last time I was at the villa.

George Sheldon tells me the secret cannot by any possibility have been
betrayed, unless by me; and I have been prudence itself.

Supposing my suspicions of Mr. Goodge to be correct, the letters
extracted from Mrs. Rebecca's correspondence might tell much, and might
even put Horatio on the track of the Meynells. But how sh