s; but they are born in
shades, with the tuck of a curtain showing light, and little can be
taken from them; so that they find scarce any terrors in the
inevitable final stroke. No; the comedy is painfullest. You and I,
Algy, old bachelors, will earn the right just to chuckle. We will
take the point of view of science, be the stage carpenters, and let
the actors move on and off. By this, we shall learn to take a
certain pride in the machinery. To become stage carpenter, is to
attain to the highest rank within the reach of intellectual man.
But your own machinery must be sound, or you can't look after that
of the theatre. Don't over-tax thy stomach, O youth!

"And now, farewell, my worthy ass! You have been thinking me one
through a fair half of this my letter, so I hasten to be in advance
of you, by calling you one. You are one: I likewise am one. We are
all one. The universal language is hee-haw, done in a grievous
yawn.

"Yours,

"Edward B.

"P.S.--Don't fail to send a letter by the next post; then, go and
see her; write again exactly what she says, and let me know the
man's name. You will not lose a minute. Also, don't waste ink in
putting Mrs. Lovell's name to paper: I desire not to hear anything
of the woman."

Algernon read this letter in a profound mystification, marvelling how it
could possibly be that Edward and Mrs. Lovell had quarrelled once more,
and without meeting.

They had parted, he knew or supposed that he knew, under an engagement
to arrange the preliminaries of an alliance, when Edward should return
from France; in other words, when Edward had thrown grave-dust on a
naughty portion of his past; severing an unwise connection. Such had
certainly been Edward's view of the matter. But Mrs. Lovell had never
spoken to Algernon on that subject. She had spoken willingly and in deep
sympathy of Dahlia. She had visited her, pitied her, comforted her; and
Algernon remembered that she had looked very keen and pinched about
the mouth in alluding to Dahlia; but how she and Edward had managed to
arrive at another misunderstanding was a prodigious puzzle to him; and
why, if their engagement had snapped, each consented to let Dahlia's
marriage (which was evidently distasteful to both) go on to the
conclusion of the ceremony, he could not comprehend. There were,
however, so many things in the world that he could n