have my suspicion that
a softer, a gentler, though a deeper sentiment influenced him on this
occasion. Mr. Hankes--to use a favorite phrase of his own--"had frequent
occasion to remark" Miss Kellett's various qualities of mind and
intelligence; he had noticed in her the most remarkable aptitude
for "business." She wrote and answered letters with a facility quite
marvellous; details, however complicated, became by her treatment simple
and easy; no difficulties seemed to deter her; and she possessed a
gift--one of the rarest and most valuable of all--never to waste a
moment on the impracticable, but to address herself, with a sort of
intuition, at once, to only such means as could be rendered available.

Now, whether it was that Mr. Hankes anticipated a time when Mr. Dunn,
in his greatness, might soar above the meaner cares of a business
life,--when, lifted into the Elysian atmosphere of the nobility, he
would look down with contemptuous apathy at the straggles and cares of
enterprise,--or whether Mr. Hankes, from sources of knowledge available
peculiarly to himself, knew that the fortunes of that great man were
not built upon an eternal foundation, but shared in that sad lot which
threatens all things human with vicissitude; whether stern facts and
sterner figures taught him that all that splendid reputation, all that
boundless influence, all that immense riches, might chance, one day or
other, to be less real, less actual, and less positive than the world
now believed them to be; whether, in a word, Mr. Hankes felt that
Fortune, having smiled so long and so blandly on her favorite, might
not, with that capriciousness so generally ascribed to her, assume
another and very different aspect,--whatever the reason, in short, he
deemed the dawn of his own day was approaching, and that, if only true
to himself, Mr. Hankes was sure to be the man of the "situation,"--the
next great star in the wide hemisphere that stretches from the Stock
Exchange to--the Marshalsea, and includes all from Belgravia to
Boulogne-sur-Mer.

Miss Kellett's abilities, her knowledge, her readiness, her tact, a
certain lightness of hand in the management of affairs that none but a
woman ever possesses, and scarcely one woman in ten thousand combines
with the more male attributes of hard common-sense, pointed her out to
Mr. Hankes as one eminently suited to aid his ambition. Now, men married
for money every day in the week; and why not marry for what sec