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half a dozen views and the portraits of a chief or two, will, I have no doubt, fetch the bibliopole a pretty penny; at least he thinks so by his offer. Here is my specimen—I will leave it with you till I start, for I shall be off this evening."

"And did you mean to have passed through Blissfold without paying me a visit?” said I.

"No," said Daly, "not exactly that; but I think if I had known you were established here, I should not have passed through Blissfold at all: owing to my late arrival I was not aware of it; and most certainly, whatever your surprise last night might have been at seeing me as a performer, mine at beholding you as audience was at least equal."

The expressed intention of Daly to leave his interesting manuscript with me till he started, implied a return to Ashmead in the after part of the day, for which I was not altogether prepared. Not but that, even after all that had passed, I should have been too happy to give him board and lodging for an indefinite term-but he was so uncertain, so mischievous, and so uncontrol

lable, that I did not feel safe in permitting the possibility of his starting off into an elaborated detail of all the events of the preceding years of our acquaintance. I resolved, if possible, to guard myself from the effects of such indiscretions by pleading a dinner-engagement at the Rectory; for it struck me that if I reduced my dinner at home, as I had already reduced my breakfast, to a tête-à-tête, he might, in the inevitable presence of the servants, indulge in some of those reminiscences, the very peculiarity of which would render them matters worth listening to, and make them valuable acquisitions to the archives of the housekeeper's room or servants' hall. Pondering, therefore, the least harsh mode of disentangling myself from a continuance of the unlooked for association with my friend, I asked him whether he had lately heard of his better half.

I cannot describe the sensations which I felt when making this enquiry, associated as it was with the recollection of events at once so overwhelming and absorbing to myself, and con

trasted as those events and everything connected with them were with the occurrences and pursuits of my present life. His answer was, that he had certainly heard of her, but the intelligence he had received was not of a nature to induce a belief that she was particularly interested in his fortunes or his fate.

"I should like your opinion on my manuscript," said Daly, with the pertinacious affection for his literary offspring so remarkable on the part of authors.

"And I should like to read it," said I; "but when do you leave this?"

"I fixed upon going this evening," said Daly; "but I am not tied to time-to-morrow will

answer my purpose just as well."

This forced me into a declaration of

ginary engagement.

my ima

"I am deucedly sorry," said I, "that I happen to have promised to dine at the Rectory with my father-in-law, else I should have been delighted if you would have dined here."

I said those very words, and said them, too,

with real sincerity and truth, merely making a conditional reservation, the cause of which was Daly's own imprudence. I should have been truly delighted to have had him to dine, IF I could have trusted him. Thus the fault, in fact, was his, not mine; and, after all, the "being delighted" surely was not a less allowable façon de parler than " deeply regretting" the impossibility of accepting a disagreeable on account of a fictitious previous engagement; nor one bit worse than the absurdity of appending to a letter, in which one has indulged in the expression of the most contemptuous opinions and degrading epithets, the generally-adopted formulary—

"I have the honour to remain, Sir,

"Your most obedient very humble servant." "But," continued I, " if you will trust me with a portion of the manuscript which you have with you, it shall be faithfully returned to you this evening; indeed, I will send it back to you when I go to the Rectory."

"I think," said Daly, "you will find it interesting-very little of the interior is known,

after all-but-if-as your literary talents are generally recognised-you should see any errors, either in style or language, perhaps you would do me the kindness to use a correcting hand ?that's all."

I promised-disclaiming at the same time any of the qualifications which Daly ascribed to me to read the book with all due attention, feeling at the same time, a strong desire to make myself, in some degree, better acquainted with the state of my friend's finances. That they were low he had confessed, but I did not feel myself at liberty to inquire if I could be of any assistance, nor indeed did I doubt, considering all our foregone acquaintance, that he would hesitate to constitute me his banker, if he considered it necessary; still there appeared in his manner a sort of restlessness and nervousness, which communicated themselves to me; and I felt, I scarce knew why-an immoderate anxiety for his departure.

I dreaded a visit from Sniggs while Daly was with me--he would not only recognise the lion

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