pictured to myself, perhaps with more
vividness than reality, a thousand little traits of manner, all proofs
strong as holy writ to my sanguine mind, that my affection was returned,
and that I loved not in vain. Again and again I read over the entire
letter; never truly did a nisi prius lawyer con over a new act of
parliament with more searching ingenuity, to detect its hidden meaning,
than did I to unravel through its plain phraseology the secret intention
of the writer towards me.

There is an old and not less true adage, that what we wish we readily
believe; and so with me--I found myself an easy convert to my own hopes
and desires, and actually ended by persuading myself--no very hard task
--that my Lord Callonby had not only witnessed but approved of my
attachment to his beautiful daughter, and for reasons probably known to
him, but concealed from me, opined that I was a suitable "parti," and
gave all due encouragement to my suit. The hint about using his
lordship's influence at the Horse guards I resolved to benefit by; not,
however, in obtaining leave of absence, which I hoped to accomplish more
easily, but with his good sanction in pushing my promotion, when I
claimed him as my right honorable father-in-law--a point, on the
propriety of which, I had now fully satisfied myself. What visions of
rising greatness burst upon my mind, as I thought on the prospect that
opened before me; but here let me do myself the justice to record, that
amid all my pleasure and exultation, my proudest thought, was in the
anticipation of possessing one in every way so much my superior--the very
consciousness of which imparted a thrill of fear to my heart, that such
good fortune was too much even to hope for.

How long I might have luxuriated in such Chateaux en Espagne, heaven
knows; thick and thronging fancies came abundantly to my mind, and it
was with something of the feeling of the porter in the Arabian Nights,
as he surveyed the fragments of his broken ware, hurled down in a moment
of glorious dreaminess, that I turned to look at the squat and
unaristocratic figure of Father Malachi, as he sat reading his newspaper
before the fire. How came I in such company; methinks the Dean of
Windsor, or the Bishop of Durham had been a much more seemly associate
for one destined as I was for the flood-tide of the world's favour.

My eye at this instant rested upon the date of the letter, which was that
of the preceding morning, and imm