must be taken, not because it is convenient or
that you like it, but because your wife can put
a pretentious address on her card. It must be
something to which you can tag Berkeley-square,
or Belgravia. In a word, a wife is a mistake,
and, what is worse, a mistake out of which there
is no issue."

Thus reasoning and reflecting—now, speculating
on what he should feel—now, imagining
what "the World" would say—he again sat
down, and once more read over Mr. Walter's
last will and testament

CHAPTER VI. SOPHY'S LETTER.

IN something over a week the post brought
two letters for the fellow-travellers. Loyd's
was from his mother—a very homely affair, full
of affection and love, and overflowing with those
little details of domestic matters so dear to
those who live in the small world of home and
its attachments.

Calvert's was from his cousin. Sophy, much
briefer, and very different in style. It ran thus:

"Dear Henry—"

"I used to be Harry," muttered he.

"Dear Henry,—It was not without surprise
I saw your handwriting again. A letter from
you is, indeed, an event at Rocksley.

"The Miss Grainger, if her name be Adelaide
(for there were two sisters) was our nursery
governess long ago. Cary liked, I hated her. She
left us to take charge of some one's children—
relatives of her own, I suspect—and though she
made some move about coming to see us, and
presenting 'her charge,' as she called it, there
was no response to the suggestion, and it
dropped. I never heard more of her.

"As to any hopes of assistance from papa, I
can scarcely speak encouragingly. Indeed, he
made no inquiry as to the contents of your
letter, and only remarked afterwards to Cary
that he trusted the correspondence was not to
continue.

"Lastly, as to myself, I really am at a loss
to see how my marriage can be a subject of joy
or grief, of pleasure or pain, to you. We are as
much separated from each other in all the
relations of life, as we shall soon be by long miles
of distance. Mr. Wentworth Graham is fully
aware of the relations which once subsisted
between us—he has even read your letters—and
it is at his instance I request that the tone of
our former intimacy shall cease from this day,
and that there may not again be any reference
to the past between us. I am sure in this I am
merely anticipating what your own sense of
honourable propriety would dictate, and that I
only express a sentiment your own judgment
has already ratified.

"Believe me to be, very sincerely yours,

"SOPHIA CALVERT."

"Oh dear! When we were Sophy and
Harry, the world went very differently from
now, when it has come to Henry and Sophia.
Not but she is right—right in everything, but
one. She ought not to have shown the letters.
There was no need of it, and it was unfair!
There is a roguery in it too, which, if I were
Mr. Wentworth Graham, I'd not like. It is
only your most accomplished sharper that ever
plays 'cartes sur table.' I'd sorely suspect the
woman who would conciliate the new love by
a treachery to the old one. However, happily,
this is his affair, not mine. Though I could
make it mine, too, if I were so disposed, by
simply reminding her that Mr. W.G. has only
seen one half, and, by long odds, the least
interesting half, of our correspondence, and that
for the other he must address himself to me.
Husbands have occasionally to learn that a
small sealed packet of old letters would be a
more acceptable present to the bride on her
wedding morning than the prettiest trinket from the
Rue de la Paix. Should like to throw this shell
into the midst of the orange-flowers and the
wedding favours, and I'd do it too, only that I
could never accurately hear of the tumult and
dismay it caused. I should be left to mere
imagination for the mischief, and imagination
no longer satisfies me."

While he thus mused, he saw Loyd preparing
for one of his daily excursions with the photo
graphic apparatus, and could not help a contemptuous
pity for a fellow so easily amused and interested,
and so easily diverted from the great
business of life—which he deemed "getting on"
—to a pastime which cost labour and returned
no profit.

"Come and see 'I Grangeri' (the name by
which the Italians designated the English family
at the villa), it's far better fun than hunting
out rocky bits, or ruined fragments of masonry.
Come, and I'll promise you something prettier
to look at than all your feathery ferns or drooping
foxgloves."

Loyd tried to excuse himself. He was always
shy and timid with strangers. His bashfulness
repelled intimacy, and so he frankly owned that
he would only be a bar to his friend's happiness,
and throw a cloud over this pleasant intercourse.

"How do you know but I'd like that?" said
Calvert, with a mocking laugh. "How do
you know but I want the very force of a
contrast to bring my own merits more
conspicuously forward?"

"And make them declare when we went away,
that it is inconceivable why Mr. Calvert should
have made a companion of that tiresome Mr.
Loyd—so low-spirited and so dreary, and so
uninteresting in every way?"

"Just so! And that the whole thing has but
one explanation—in Calvert's kindness and
generosity; who, seeing the helplessness of this poor
depressed creature, has actually sacrificed
himself to vivify and cheer him. As we hear of
the healthy people suffering themselves to be
bled that they might impart their vigorous
heart's blood to a poor wretch in the cholera."

"But I'm not blue yet," said Loyd, laughing.
"I almost think I could get on with my own
resources."

"Of course you might, in the fashion you do