n
ascribe to you. Is it usual to treat these messages so cavalierly?"

"It never happened with me till this morning, Lady Augusta," said he, in
the same low tone. "Carried away by an impulse which I will not try to
account for, I had dared to speak to you of myself and of my future in a
way that showed how eventful to both might prove the manner in which you
heard me."

"Well, Dunn," cried Lord Glengariff, entering, "I suppose you have made
a day of work of it; we have never seen you since breakfast."

"On the contrary, my Lord," replied he, in deep confusion, "I have taken
my idleness in the widest sense. Never wrote a line,--not looked into a
newspaper."

"Wouldn't even open a telegraphic message which came to his hands this
morning," said Lady Augusta, with a malicious drollery in her glance
towards him.

"Incredible!" cried my Lord.

"Quite true, I assure your Lordship," said Dunn, in deeper confusion,
and not knowing what turn to give his explanation.

"The fact is," broke in Lady Augusta, hurriedly, "Mr. Dunn was so
implicit in his obedience to our prescription of perfect rest and
repose, that he made it a point of honor not even to read a telegram
without permission."

"I must say it is very flattering to us," said Lord Glengariff; "but now
let us reward the loyalty, and let him see what his news is."

Dunn looked at Lady Augusta, who, with the very slightest motion of her
head, gave consent, and he broke open the despatch.

Dunn crushed the paper angrily in his hand when he finished reading it,
and muttered some low words of angry meaning.

"Nothing disagreeable, I trust?" asked his Lordship.

"Yes, my Lord, something even worse than disagreeable," said he; then
flattening out the crumpled paper, he held it to him to read.

Lord Glengariff, putting on his spectacles, perused the document slowly,
and then, turning towards Dunn, in a voice of deep agitation, said,
"This is very disastrous indeed; are you prepared for it?"

Without attending to the question, Dunn took the despatch from Lord
Glengariff, and handed it to Lady Augusta.

"A run for gold!" cried she, suddenly. "An attempt to break the Ossory
Bank! What does it all mean? Who are they that make this attack?"

"Opponents--some of them political, some commercial, a few, perhaps, men
personally unfriendly,--enemies of what they call my success!" and he
sighed heavily on the last word. "Let me see," said he, slowly, after a
pause; "to-day