ould he get
his first inkling of the business?

Certainly not from me or from George Sheldon. But might not his
attention have been attracted by that advertisement for heirs-at-law to
the Haygarthian estate which appeared in the _Times_?

These are questions with which the legal intellect of my Sheldon may
best grapple. For myself, I can only drift with the resistless stream
called life.

I was so unfortunate as to make my appearance in our common
sitting-room five minutes after my patron. There had been time enough
for him to examine the superscription and postmark of my letter. He was
whistling when I went into the room. People who have been looking at
things that don't belong to them always whistle.

I did not care to read Charlotte's first letter with those hawk's eyes
fixed upon me. So I just glanced at the dear handwriting, as if running
over an ordinary letter with the eye of indifference, and then put the
document into my pocket with the best assumption of carelessness I was
capable of. How I longed for the end of that tedious meal, over which
Captain Paget lingered in his usual epicurean fashion!

My friend Horatio has shown himself not a little curious about my late
absence from the joint domicile. I again resorted to the Dorking
fiction,--my aged aunt breaking fast, and requiring much propitiation
from a dutiful nephew with an eye to her testamentary arrangements. I
had been compelled to endow my shadowy relative with a comfortable
little bit of money, in order to account for my devotion; since the
powerful mind of my Horatio would have refused to grasp the idea of
disinterested affection for an ancient kinswoman.

There was an ominous twinkle in the Captain's sharp gray eyes when I
gave this account of my absence, and I sorely doubt his acceptance of
this second volume of the Dorking romance. Ah, what a life it is we
lead in the tents of Ishmael, the cast-away! through what tortuous
pathways wander the nomad tribes who call Hagar, the abandoned, their
mother! what lies, what evasions, what prevarications! Horatio Paget
and I watch each other like two cunning fencers, with a stereotyped
smile upon our lips and an eager restlessness in our eyes, and who
shall say that one or other of our rapiers is not poisoned, as in the
famous duel before Claudius, usurper of Denmark? My dear one's letter
is all sweetness and love. She is coming home; and much as she prefers
Yorkshire to Bayswater, she is pleased to r