culation during dinner. How many phantom Smiths, short and long, stout
and lean, ill-tempered and well-tempered--rich, respectable, or highly
dangerous merchants, spies, forgers, nabobs, swindlers, danced before us,
in the endless mazes of fanciful conjecture, during that anxious
_tete-a-tete_, which was probably to be interrupted by the arrival of the
gentleman himself.

My wife and I puzzled over the problem as people would over the possible
_denouement_ of a French novel; and at last, by mutual consent, we came
to the conclusion that Smith could, and would turn out to be no other
than the good-natured valetudinarian in the yellow waistcoat himself, a
humorist, as was evident enough, and a millionaire, as we unhesitatingly
pronounced, who had no immediate relatives, and as I hoped, and my wife
"was certain," taken a decided fancy to our little Fanny; I patted the
child's head with something akin to pride, as I thought of the
magnificent, though remote possibilities, in store for her.

Meanwhile, hour after hour stole away. It was a beautiful autumn evening,
and the amber lustre of the declining sun fell softly upon the yews and
flowers, and gave an air, half melancholy, half cheerful, to the dark-red
brick piers surmounted with their cracked and grass-grown stone urns, and
furnished with the light foliage of untended creeping plants. Down the
short broad walk leading to this sombre entrance, my eye constantly
wandered; but no impatient rattle on the latch, no battering at the gate,
indicated the presence of a visited, and the lazy bell hung dumbly among
the honey-suckles.

"When will he come? Yellow waistcoat promised _this evening_! It has
been evening a good hour and a half, and yet he is not here. When will
he come? It will soon be dark--the evening will have passed--will he
come at all?"

Such were the uneasy speculations which began to trouble us. Redder and
duskier grew the light of the setting sun, till it saddened into the
mists of night. Twilight came, and then darkness, and still no arrival,
no summons at the gate. I would not admit even to my wife the excess of
my own impatience. I could, however, stand it no longer; so I took my hat
and walked to the gate, where I stood by the side of the public road,
watching every vehicle and person that approached, in a fever of
expectation. Even these, however, began to fail me, and the road grew
comparatively quiet and deserted. Having kept guard like a sentinel fo