." And
forthwith he began a story, which lost nothing of the pain and misery
it caused me by the unsympathizing tone and stolid look of the narrator.
For my reader's sake, as for my own, I will condense it into the fewest
words I can, and omit all that Herr Heinfetter inserted either as
comment or censure. My father had eloped with Madame Cleremont! They had
fled to Inn-spruck, from which my father returned to the neighborhood of
Belgium, to offer Cleremont a meeting. Cleremont, however, possessed in
his hands a reparation he liked better,--my father's check-book, with a
number of signed but unfilled checks. These he at once filled up to the
last shilling of his credit, and drew out the money, so that my father's
first draft on London was returned dishonored. The villa and all its
splendid contents were sequestrated, and an action for divorce, with ten
thousand pounds laid as damages, already commenced. Of three thousand
francs, which our letter assured us at Zurich, Eccles had drawn two
thousand: he would have taken all, but Heinfetter, who prudently foresaw
I must be got rid of some day, retained one thousand to pay my way.
Eccles had gone, promising to return when he had saved his own effects,
or what he called his own, from the wreck; but a few lines had come from
him to say the smash was complete, the "huissiers" in possession, seals
on everything, and "not even the horses watered without a gendarme
present in full uniform."

"Tell Digby, if we travel together again, he 'll not have to complain of
my puffing him off for a man of fortune; and, above all, advise him to
avoid Brussels in his journey-ings. He 'll find his father's creditors,
I 'm afraid, far more attached to him than Mademoiselle Pauline."

His letter wound up with a complaint over his own blighted prospects,
for, of course, his chance of the presentation was now next to hopeless,
and he did not know what line of life he might be driven to.

And now, shall I own that, ruined and deserted as I was, overwhelmed
with sorrow and shame, there was no part of all the misery I felt more
bitterly than the fate of her who had been so kindly affectionate to
me,--who had nursed me so tenderly in sickness, and been the charming
companion of my happiest hours? At first it seemed incredible. My
father's manner to her had ever been coldness itself, and I could only
lead myself to believe the story by imagining how the continued cruelty
of Cleremont had actually driv