“Your very faithful servant,

“REGINALD TALBOYS.”

Lucy was delighted with this note.  “Who says it was nothing to have been born a gentleman?”

The second letter was from Reginald No. 2; and, if I only give the reader a fragment of it, I still expect his gratitude, all one as if I had disinterred a fragment of Orpheus or Tiresias.

Dear lucy. 
It is very ungust of you to go and
Mary other peeple wen you
Promised me. but it is mr. dod. 
So i dont so much mind i like
Mr. dod. he is a duc. and they all
Say i am too litle and jane says
Sailors always end by been
Drouned so it is only put off. 
But you reely must keep your
Promise to me. wen i am biger
And mr.  Dod is drouned. my
Ginny pigs—­

Here a white hand drew the pleasing composition out of David’s hand, and dropped it on the floor; two piteous, tearful eyes were bent on him, and a white arm went tenderly round his neck to save him from the threatened fate.

At this sight Eve pounced on the horrid scroll, and hurled it, with general acclamation, into the flames.

Thus that sweet infant revenged himself, and, like Sampson, hit hardest of all at parting—­in tears and flame vanished from written fiction, and, I conclude, went back to Gavarni.

There was a letter from Mr. Fountain—­all fire and fury.  She was never to write or speak to him any more.  He was now looking out for a youth of good family to adopt and to make a Fontaine of by act of Parliament, etc., etc.  A fusillade of written thunderbolts.

There was another from Mrs. Bazalgette, written with cream—­of tartar and oil—­of vitriol.  She forgave her niece and wished her every happiness it was possible for a young person to enjoy who had deceived her relations and married beneath her.  She felt pity rather than anger; and there was no reason why Mr. and Mrs. Dodd should not visit her house, as far as she was concerned; but Mr. Bazalgette was a man of very stern rectitude, and, as she could not make sure that he would treat them with common courtesy after what had passed, she thought a temporary separation might be the better course for all parties.

I may as well take this opportunity of saying that these two egotists carried out the promise of their respective letters.  Mr. Fountain blustered for a year or two, and then showed manifest signs of relenting.

Mrs. Bazalgette kept cool, and wrote, in oils, twice a year to Mrs. Dodd: 

“ET GARDAIT TOUT DOUCEMENT UNE HAINE IRRECONCILIABLE.”

Lucy had to answer these letters.  In signing one of them, she took a look at her new signature and smiled.  “What a dear, quaint little name mine is!” said she.  “Lucy Dodd;” and she kissed the signature.

A Month after Marriage.