great pleasure to us, if—if we could feel that
your delay may not prove injurious to you"

"It will be very enjoyable, at all events,"
said he, with an easy smile, and as though to
evade the discussion of the other "count."

"I was thinking of what your friends would
say about it."

"It is a very limited public, I assure you,"
said he, laughing, "and one which so implicitly
trusts me, that I have only to say I have done
what I believed to be right, to be confirmed in
their good esteem."

The old lady was not to be put off by
generalities, and she questioned him closely as to
whether an overland passage did not cost a
hundred pounds and upwards, and all but asked
whether it was quite convenient to him to
disburse that amount. She hinted something
about an adage of people who "paid for their
whistle," but suggested some grave doubts if
they ever felt themselves recompensed in after
time by recollecting the music that had cost so
dearly; in a word, she made herself supremely
disagreeable while he drank his tea, and only too
glad to make his escape to go and sit beside
Florry, and talk over again all they had said in
the morning.

"Only think, Milly," said she, poutingly, as
her sister entered, "how Aunt Grainger is
worrying poor Joseph, and won't let him enjoy
in peace the few days we are to have together."

But he did enjoy them, and to the utmost.
Florence very soon threw off all trace of her
late indisposition, and sought, in many ways, to
make her lover forget all the pain she had cost
him. The first week was one of almost
unalloyed happiness; the second opened with the
thought that the days were numbered. After
Monday came Tuesday, then Wednesday, which
preceded Thursday, when he was to leave.

How was it, they asked themselves, that a
whole week had gone over? It was surely
impossible! Impossible it must be, for now they
remembered the mass of things they had to
talk over together, not one of which had been
touched on.

"Why, Joseph dearest, you have told me
nothing about yourself. Whether you are to be in
Calcutta, or up the country? Where, and how I
am to write? When I am to hear from you?
What of papa—I was going to say, our papa—
would he like to hear from me, and may I write
to him? Dare I speak to him as a daughter?
Will he think me forward or indelicate for it?
May I tell him of all our plans? Surely you
ought to have told me some of these things!
What could we have been saying to each other
all this while?"

Joseph looked at her, and she turned away
her head pettishly, and murmured something
about his being too absurd. Perhaps he was; I
certainly hold no brief to defend him in the case;
convict or acquit him, dear reader, as you please.

And yet, notwithstanding this appeal, the next
three days passed over just as forgetfully as their
predecessors, and then came the sad Wednesday
evening, and the sadder Thursday morning,
when, wearied out and exhausted, for they had
sat up all night—his last night—to say good–by.

"I declare he will be late again; this is the
third time he has come back from the boat,"
exclaimed Miss Grainger, as Florence sank, half
fainting, into Emily's arms.

"Yes, yes, dear Joseph," muttered Emily, "go
now, go at once, before she recovers again."

"If I do not, I never can," cried he, as the
tears coursed down his face, while he hurried
away.

The monotonous beat of the oars suddenly
startled the half–conscious girl; she looked up,
and lifted her hand to wave an adieu, and then
sank back into her sister's arms, and fainted.

Three days after, a few hurried lines from
Loyd told Florence that he had sailed for Malta
—this time irrevocably off. They were as sad
lines to read as to have written. He had begun
by an attempt at jocularity; a sketch of his
fellow–travellers coming on board; their national
traits, and the strange babble of tongues about
them; but, as the bell rang, he dropped this, and
scrawled out, as best he could, his last and blotted
good–byes. They were shaky, ill–written words,
and might, who knows, have been blurred with
a tear or two. One thing is certain, she who
read, shed many over them, and kissed them, with
her last waking breath, as she fell asleep.

About the same day that this letter reached
Florence, came another, and very different
epistle, to the hands of Algernon Drayton, from
his friend Calvert. It was not above a dozen
lines, and dated from Alexandria:

"The Leander has just steamed in, crowded
with snobs, civil and military, but no Loyd.
The fellow must have given up his appointment
or gone 'long sea.' In any case, he has escaped
me. I am frantic. A whole month's plottings of
vengeance scattered to the winds and lost! I'd
return to England, if I were only certain to
meet with him; but a Faquir, whom I have
just consulted, says, 'Go east, and the worst
will come of it!' and so I start in two hours for
Suez. There are two here who know me, but
I mean to caution them how they show it; they
are old enough to take a hint.—Yours, H. C.

"I hear my old regiment has mutinied, and
sabred eight of the officers. I wish they'd have
waited a little longer, and neither S. nor W.
would have got off so easily. From all I can
learn, and from the infernal fright the fellows
who are going back, exhibit, I suspect that the
work goes bravely on."

NEW WORK BY MR. DICKENS
lN Monthly Parts, uniform with the Original Editions of
"Pickwick," "Copperfleld," &c.

Now publishing, PART I., price 1s., of

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
BY CHARLES DICKENS.

IN TWENTY MONTHLY PARTS.

With Illustrations by MARCUS STONE
London: CHAPMAN and HALL, 193, Piccadilly.