Year: 1868

Isomuic anu 0reeh Will tne people mere, Jill
1t is time to stroll out for little fresco ram
BILE with Katinka. ought to tell you that
old Madame Narratochie knew my grand
father, Sir Peregrine Considine, and looks
upon me as an old friend-tells me about her
money matters, and has impaired to me the
names of her husbands relatives in Ger
| many, who are to be written TO about Ka-
tinka when she dies, and she has given me
| special directions about her funeral The
dear old soul cannot hear word say and
must be sorely puzzled by my manuscripts,
which are purely phonetic. | hear I have
given her the first laugh she has had for
eighteen years.


81 sec you shaking your wise diplomatic
head over all this, and muttering, as intclli-
gibly as your cigar will permit, mournful
prediction about how it is all to end. al
most fancy can hear you say, with that
impatient toss of your chin-so like a horse
with tight-bearing rein-'The fellow is get
ting into precious scrape, from which there
will be no exit except by disgrace or ruin
and reply, Wrong on all the issues; wrong
everywhere. There is no Love in the case
on either side each of us is well aware that
we are both penniless, and Katinka herself
made it the first condition of our intimacy,
that anything bordering on courtship should
be strictly excluded If catch you spoony
(she did not say spoony-she called it by a
Greek worD Ill see you no more.


"'That's all very fine, you say" but


"But what? Are two people, fully con
scious that Fate has separated them far as
the poles asunder, and who have the courage
and the candor to make this fact the condi-
tion of their friendship-are they to be such
perjurers to their own hearts as TO nourish
hopes they have sworn to exclude? and are
they out of cowardly mstrust of their
self.control,to to deny themselves the exquisite
bliss of daily intercourse hours of such
ecstacy that dare not dwell on them, lest
you should misinterpret the rapture with
which recall them p


1t was in perfect honesty and in all truth
fulness that wrote this. l believed every
word of it. If did not confess that was
over head and ears in love with Katinka-
that, waking or sleeping, her image never
left melt was because did not dare TO
own it to myself The terrible forfeit
should have had to pay had once, even
once, lapsed in our contract, and ventured
to talk to her Of love, impressed me so pow
erfully, that / resolved my secret should
never quit my heart.


Often and often-indeed, scarcely did
day pass without tive talked to each other
over what fate might mark our future. She
knew her grandmother's projects as regarded
herself, and that she was to be consigned to
the care of her grandtathcr's relations in
Germany; but could plainly see 1t was II
| plan she little liked, though she never open
ly declared that she would resist it. She
would dwell on the stiff formalty of German
manners, the dull routine of German life,
and the horror which any trait OF character
excited which was not strictly in accordance
| with German notions. Imagine she
would say, ''my semi-savage habits intro
duced into one of those quiet households.
fancy their shocked feelings if they asked
me about some domestic care, and found
that was in utter ignorance Of it-that my
only education lay in talking some half-a-
dozen barbarous languages, every itliom Of
which recalled life of wild carelessncss,
and that, though could break colt for the
saddle, or shoot a wood pigeon with ball,
l could scarcely thread a needle, or use it
when threaded


If demonstrated with her, and said she
was unjust to hersef-that the very traits of
her nature were such as were sure to find
sympathy with people so ready to dash the
common work-a-day habits of life with IL
certain poetry-she would merely reply, SIT
would be very rash to try"


What project she had conceived in her
own mind-and l am sure she had one-I
never knew. She would burst out at mo-
ments with wild .furor about the destiny
of women in the East, and declare it was in
gross Ignorance that men wrote of them as
slaves; that iii reality where their intellect
fitted them for companionshp, they were
trusted and confided Ia. She had actually
known Of occasions where the counsels that
swayed Cabinet came from the harem and
though she would not in the remotest degree
connect these opinions with anything in her
own destiny, they were the kind of specula-
tions she loved to revcl in-not the less per-
haps, from the amusement she derived from
the misery with which listened TO then !.
As for myself, she predicted that ii could
only conquer my Incidence, and address my
self resolutely to some career, should have
a certain success. / am one, said she to me,
who believes in luck, and I'd say you are
lucky.


Sim afraid, said l. laughing, that my
experience cannot exactly corroborate you. =


"Possibly enough as regards the past, but
| am looking to the future. 4sr5,


"Some men go in search of Fortune, and
she plays hide-and-seek with them and
some, Fortune finds out for herself and
adopts them for her own. l sometimes think
that in small way you are one of these. =
will not pause to own how she tortured
me by the tone with which she would dis
cuss our roads in life, always showing me
how divergent they must be and laughing
ly suggesting how the memory Of our
strange intimacy might possibly come up in
after years, and how each of us would won
der what had become of the other.


cannot dwell on the alienation of Hope
and Fear in which / lived, nor say how by a
word Or look she would make me the hap
piest or the most wretched of mankind
how no day passed without my having to
experience the extreme of each state of joy
or depression


While thus lived q life balancing between
ecstacy and despair, the post brought two
letters in my aunt's handwriting, one was
} for Ponsonby, the other for myself Mine
was very brief, but could scarcely have been
more astounding. II ran thus:-


s'DEAR NEpHEw. friend Mr.. Pom.
sonby has told me, with all becoming deli.
cacy and regard for my feelings, Of YOU


rash marriage, and the misery in which youl
, thoughtless conduct has involved a most in.