“I am happy to-day, Doctor,—­Heaven save the mark!  My happiness is so much more than my share, that I shall insist, will ye, nill ye, on your sharing it with me.  I have a heart to open to somebody, and you are the very man.  So, sit you down, and bear with my egotism, for I have a little tale to tell you, of who I am and how I came here.  The story is not so commonplace but that your kindness will find, here and there, an interesting passage in it.

“I have seen that that picture,”—­indicating the one I have last described,—­“attracted your attention, and that you were prevented from questioning me about it only by delicacy.  That is my father’s likeness.  He was of English birth, the younger son of a rich Liverpool merchant.  An impulsive, romantic, adventurous boy, seized early with a passion for seeing the world, his unimaginative, worldly-wise father, practical and severe, kept him within narrow, fretting bounds, and imposed harsh restraints upon him.  When he was but sixteen years old, he ran away from home, shipped before the mast, and, after several long voyages, was discharged, at his own request, at Carthagena, where he entered a shipping-house as clerk, and, having excellent mercantile talents, was rapidly promoted.

“Meantime, through a sister, the only remaining child, except a half-witted brother, he heard at long intervals from home.  His father remained strangely inexorable, fiercely forbade his return, and became violent at the slightest mention of his name by his sister, or some old and attached servant; he died without bequeathing his forgiveness, or, of course, a single shilling.  But the young man thrived with his employers, whose business growing rapidly more and more prosperous, and becoming widely extended, they transferred him to a branch house at Malaga.  Here he formed the acquaintance of the Don Francisco de Zea-Bermudez, whose rising fortunes made his own.

“Zea-Bermudez was at that time engaged in large commercial operations.  Although, under the diligent and ambitious teaching of his famous relative, the profound, sagacious, patriotic, bold, and gloriously abused Jovellanos, he had become accomplished in politics, law, and diplomacy, he seemed to be devoting himself for the present to large speculations and the sudden acquisition of wealth, and to let the state of the nation, the Cortes, and its schemes, alone.

“Only a young, beautiful, and accomplished sister shared his splendid establishment in Malaga; and for her my father formed an engrossing attachment, reciprocated in the fullest, almost simultaneously with his friendship for her brother.  Zea favored the suit of the high-spirited and clever young Englishman, whose intelligence, independence, and perseverance, to say nothing of his good looks and his engaging manners, had quite won his heart.  By policy, too, no less than by pleasure, the match recommended itself to him;—­my father would make a famous junior-partner.  So they were married under the name of Pintal, bestowed upon his favorite English clerk by the adventurous first patron at Carthagena, who had found the boy provided with only a ‘purser’s name,’ as sailors term it.