of such admirable literary excellence, were the following f

rocess of transformation from something very like a villain to something

on for the person addressed, common to lette

h at present. Depend upon it, there is nothing like work. Fix your teeth in it. Work is medicine. A truism! T

her time, and that it is for her I am seeking to get free, is conceived with your usual discrimination. For Margaret Lovell? Do you imagine that I desire to be all my life kicking the beam, weighed in capricious sc

y them successfully, Nature pretty language this is for you, Algy! I can do nothing but

ney. If it were two, or twenty, thous

n. Even now, I do not-it's against reason-I do not believe that she-this Dahlia-means to go through with it. She is trying me. I have told her that she was my wife. Her self-respect-everything that keeps a woman's head up-must have induced her to think so. Why, she is not a

on, or I should now be yoked to a mere thing of the seasons and the hours-a creature whose 'No' to-day is the 'Yes' of t

re not constituted as they are, and that we are wilfully earnest, while they, who never can be so save under compulsion, carry it on with us, expecting that at a certain crisis a curtain will drop, an

bat every new revolution of fortune, she can't but fall ill. But I think of her; and I wish to God I did not. She is going to enter her own sphere-though, mark me, it will turn out as I s

er, and it appears to me that you have shuffled in your answer. I merely wish to know if there is a letter; because I am at present out in my study of her character. It seems monstrous that she should never have written! Don't you view it in that light? To be ready to break with me, without one good-bye!-it's gratifying, but I am astonished; for so gentle and tender a creature, such as I

re time and Equity is dispensed without my aid), dine you, and put you in the whirl of Paris. You deserve a holiday. Nunc est bibendum! You shall sing it. Tell me what you think of her behaviour. You are a judge of women. I think I am developing nerves. In fact, work is what I need-a file to bite. And send me also the name of this man who has made the bargain-who is to be her husband. Give me a d

have a sun over us; but they are born in shades, with the tuck of a curtain showing light, and little can be taken from them; so that they find scarce any terrors in the inevitable final stroke. No; the comedy is painfullest. You and I, Algy, old bachelors, will earn the right just to chuckle. We will take the point of view of science, be

his my letter, so I hasten to be in advance of you, by calling you one. You are one: I li

ou

war

ly what she says, and let me know the man's name. You will not lose a minute. Also, don't w

marvelling how it could possibly be that Edward and Mrs

hlia. She had visited her, pitied her, comforted her; and Algernon remembered that she had looked very keen and pinched about the mouth in alluding to Dahlia; but how she and Edward had managed to arrive at another misunderstanding was a prodigious puzzle to him; and why, if their engagement had snapped, each consented to let Dahlia's marriage (which was evidently distasteful to both) go on to the conclusion of the ceremony, he coul

sence of a grammatical king and a government, sit as lords upon the English tongue) a crucible woman. She may be inexcusable herself; but you for you to be base, for you to be cowardly, even to betray a weakness, though it be on her

thing in cold blood. We need not examine their correspondence. In a few weeks she had contrived to put a chasm between them as lovers. Had he remained in England, boldly facing his own evil actions, she would have been subjugated, for however keenly she might pierce to the true character of a man, the show of an unflinching courage dominated her; but his departure, leaving all the brutality to

to perceive whether this was t