ng eyes, seldom looking up, and never
growing a bit brighter by anything that he says or hears about him.
Indeed, any one seeing him for the first time would say, 'There's a man
whose thoughts are many a mile away; he is n't minding what's going on
about him here.' But that is not the case; there is n't a look, a stir,
nor a gesture that he does n't remark. There 's not a chair drawn closer
to another, not a glance interchanged, that he has n't noticed; and I
've heard it said, 'Many would n't open a letter before him, he's so
sure to guess the contents from just reading the countenance.'"

"The world is always prone to exaggerate such gifts," said she, calmly.

"So it may be, dear, but I don't fancy it could do so here. He's one of
those men that, if he had been born to high station, would be a great
politician or a great general. You see that, somehow, without any effort
on his part, things come up just as he wished them. I believe, after
all," said he, with a heavy sigh, "it's just luck! Whatever one man puts
his hand to in this world goes on right and smoothly, and another has
every mishap and misfortune that can befall him. He may strive, and
toil, and fret his brains over it, but devil a good it is. If he is born
to ill luck, it will stick to him."

"It's not a very cheery philosophy!" said she, gently.

"I suppose not, dear; but what is very cheery in this life, when you
come to find it out? Is n't it nothing but disappointment and vexation?"

Partly to rally him out of this vein of depression, and partly from
motives of curiosity, she once more adverted to Dunn, and asked how it
happened that they crossed each other again in life.

"He's what they call 'carrying the sale' of Kellett's Court, my dear.
You know we 're in the Encumbered Estates now; and Dunn represents Lord
Lackington and others that hold the mortgages over us. The property was
up for sale in November, then in May last, and was taken down by Dunn's
order. I never knew why. It was then, however, he got me this thing in
the Revenue,--this beggarly place of sixty-five pounds a year; and told
me, through his man Hanks,--for I never met himself about it,--that
he 'd take care my interests were not overlooked. After that the Courts
closed, and he went abroad; and that's all there's between us, or,
indeed, likely to be between us; for he never wrote me as much as one
line since he went away, nor noticed any one of my letters, though I
sent him four,