f his cravat, and the wave of his white
hands. Clever, smart fellows, like Sam Winnington, are generally
coxcombs. Oh, Sam! where, in order to serve your own turn now, be your
purple shadows, your creamy whites, your marvellous reading of people's
characters, and writing of the same on their faces, their backs, their
very hands and feet, which should leave the world your delighted debtor
long after it had forgotten yon member's mighty services?

Clarissa had never danced so many dances with one evening's partner as
with the smitten member, at the assembly given on the spur of the
moment in his honour, whereat Sam Winnington, standing with his hat
under his arm, and leaning against the carved door, was an observant
spectator. He was not sullen as when Will Locke and Dulcie tumbled
headlong into the pit of matrimony! he was smiling and civil; but his
lips were white and his eyes sunken, as if the energetic young painter
did not sleep of nights.

Clary was not sincere; she gave that infatuated, tolerably heavy,
red-faced, fox-hunting member, own cousin to the Justice, every reason
to suppose that she would lend him the most favourable ear, when he
chose to pay her his addresses, and then afforded him the amplest
provocation to cry, "Caprice--thy name is woman." She had just sung
"Tantivy" to him after supper, when she sailed up to Sam Winnington, and
addressed him demurely:--

"I have come to wish you good-night, sir."

"And I to wish you farewell, madam."

"Farewell is a hard word, Master Winnington," returned Clary, with a
great tide of colour rushing into her face, and a gasp as for breath,
and tracing figures nervously on the floor with her little shoe and its
brave paste-buckle.

"It shall be said though, and that without further delay, unless three
very different words be put in its place."

"Sir, you are tyrannous," protested Clary, in a tremulous voice.

"No, Mistress Clarissa, I have had too good cause to know who has been
the tyrant in this business," declared Sam Winnington, speaking out
roundly, as a woman loves to hear a man, though it be to her own
condemnation, "You have used me cruelly, Clarissa Gage; you have abused
my faith, wasted the best years of my life, and deceived my affections."

"What were the three words," asked Clary, faint and low.

"'Yours, Sam Winnington;' or else, 'Farewell, Clarissa Gage?'"

"Yours, Sam Winnington."

He caught her so sharp up by the arm at that sentence, that