ld to Heaven we could exchange," sighed Upton, languidly.

"The saints forbid!" exclaimed the other; "and it would do us little
good if we were able."

"Why so?"

"I'd never know what to do with that fine intellect if I had it; and as
for _you_, what with your confounded pills and mixtures, your infernal
lotions and embrocations, you'd make my sound system as bad as your own
in three months' time."

"You are quite wrong, my dear Harcourt; I should treat the stomach as
you would do the brain,--give it next to nothing to do, in the hopes it
might last the longer."

"There now, good night," said Harcourt; "he's always the better for
bitters, whether he gives or takes them." And with a good-humored laugh
he left the room.

Glencore's eyes followed him as he retired; and then, as they closed, an
expression as of long-repressed suffering settled down on his features
so marked that Upton hastily asked,--

"Are you ill, are you in pain, Glencore?"

"In pain? Yes," said he, "these two hours back I have been suffering
intensely; but there's no help for it! Must you really leave this
to-morrow, Upton?"

"I must. This letter from the Foreign Office requires my immediate
presence in London, with a very great likelihood of being obliged to
start at once for the Continent."

"And I had so much to say,--so many things to consult you on," sighed
the other.

"Are you equal to it now?" asked Upton.

"I must try, at all events. You shall learn my plan." He was silent
for some minutes, and sat with his head resting on his hand, in deep
reflection. At last he said, "Has it ever occurred to you, Upton, that
some incident of the past, some circumstance in itself insignificant,
should rise up, as it were, in after life to suit an actual emergency,
just as though fate had fashioned it for such a contingency?"

"I cannot say that I have experienced what you describe, if, indeed, I
fully understand it."

"I'll explain better by an instance. You know now,"--here his voice
became slow, and the words fell with a marked distinctness,--"you know
now what I intend by this woman. Well, just as if to make my plan more
feasible, a circumstance intended for a very different object offers
itself to my aid. When my uncle, Sir Miles Herrick, heard that I was
about to marry a foreigner, he declared that he would never leave me a
shilling of his fortune. I am not very sure that I cared much for the
threat when it was uttered. My friends, howev