d
with volumes that shone with gilding on their backs. The inkstand,
the paper-weight, the envelope case on his writing-table were all
handsome. He had a single good portrait of a woman's head hanging on
one of his walls. He had a special place adapted for his pistols,
others for his foils, and again another for his whips. The room was
as pretty a bachelor's room as you would wish to enter, but you
might see, by the position of the single easy-chair that was brought
forward, that it was seldom appropriated to the comfort of more than
one person. Here he sat lounging over his breakfast, late on a Sunday
morning in September, when all the world was out of town. He was
reading a letter which had just been brought down to him from his
club. Though the writer of it was his sister Kate, she had not been
privileged to address it to his private lodgings. He read it very
quickly, running rapidly over its contents, and then threw it aside
from him as though it were of no moment, keeping, however, an
enclosure in his hand. And yet the letter was of much moment, and
made him think deeply. "If I did it at all," said he, "it would be
more with the object of cutting him out than with any other."

The reader will hardly require to be told that the him in question
was John Grey, and that Kate's letter was one instigating her brother
to renew his love affair with Alice. And Vavasor was in truth well
inclined to renew it, and would have begun the renewing it at once,
had he not doubted his power with his cousin. Indeed it has been seen
that he had already attempted some commencement of such renewal at
Basle. He had told Kate more than once that Alice's fortune was not
much, and that her beauty was past its prime; and he would no doubt
repeat the same objections to his sister with some pretence of
disinclination. It was not his custom to show his hand to the players
at any game that he played. But he was, in truth, very anxious to
obtain from Alice a second promise of her hand. How soon after that
he might marry her, would be another question.

Perhaps it was not Alice's beauty that he coveted, nor yet her money
exclusively. Nevertheless he thought her very beautiful, and was
fully aware that her money would be of great service to him. But I
believe that he was true in that word that he spoke to himself, and
that his chief attraction was the delight which he would have in
robbing Mr Grey of his wife. Alice had once been his love, had
cl