success. I find it
won't do, though; I'm just as clearheaded and as low-spirited as when I
started."

"Bosh!" muttered O'Shea, half dreamily.

"It's no such thing!" retorted Heathcote. "At any ordinary time one
bottle of that strong Burgundy would have gone to my head; and see, now
I don't feel it."

"Maybe you 're fretting about something. It's perhaps a weight on your
heart--"

"That's it!" sighed out the other, as though the very avowal were an
inexpressible relief to him.

"Is it for a woman?" asked O'Shea.

The other nodded, and then leaned his head on his hand.

"Upon my conscience, I sometimes think they 're worse than the Jews,"
said the Member, violently; "and there's no being 'up to them.'"

"It's our own fault, then," cried Heathcote; "because we never play
fairly with them."

"Bosh!" muttered O'Shea, again.

"I defy you to deny it," cried he, angrily.

"I 'd like a five-pound note to argue it either way," said O'Shea.

As if offended by the levity of the speech, Heathcote turned away and
said nothing.

"When you get down to Rome, and have some fun over those ox-fences, you
'll forget all about her, whoever she is," said O'Shea.

"I'm for England to-morrow, and for India next week, if they 'll have
me."

"Well, if that's not madness--"

"No, sir, it is not," broke in Heathoote, angrily; "nor will I permit
you or any other man to call it so."

"What I meant was, that when a fellow had _your_ prospects before
him, India ought n't to tempt him, even with the offer of the
Governor-Generalship."

"Forgive me my bad temper, like a good fellow," cried Heathoote,
grasping the other's band; "but, in honest truth, I have no prospects,
no future, and there is not a more hopeless wretch to be found than the
man before you."

O'Shea was very near saying "Bosh!" once more, but he coughed it under.

Like all bashful men who have momentarily given way to impatience,
Charles Heathoote was over eager to obtain his companion's good will,
and so he dashed at once into a full confession of all the difficulties
that beset, and all the cares that surrounded him. O'Shea had never
known accurately, till now, the amount of May Leslie's fortune, nor how
completely she was the mistress of her own fate. Neither had he ever
heard of that strange provision in the will which imposed a forfeit
upon her if unwilling to accept Charles Heathcote as her husband,--a
condition which he shrewdly judged to be the very su