“My dear Mr. Lorrequer—­I have just heard from Kilkee, that you are at length about to pay us your long promised visit, and write these few lines to beg that before leaving Paris you will kindly execute for me the commissions of which I enclose a formidable list, or at least as many of them as you can conveniently accomplish.  Our stay here now will be short, that it will require all your despatch to overtake us before reaching Milan, Lady Jane’s health requiring an immediate change of climate.  Our present plans are, to winter in Italy, although such will interfere considerably with Lord Callonby, who is pressed much by his friends to accept office.  However, all this and our other gossip I reserve for our meeting.  Meanwhile, adieu, and if any of my tasks bore you, omit them at once, except the white roses and the Brussels veil, which Lady Jane is most anxious for.

                                   “Sincerely yours,
                                             “Charlotte Callonby.”

How much did these few and apparently common-place lines convey to me?  First, my visit was not only expected, but actually looked forward to, canvassed—­perhaps I might almost whisper to myself the flattery—­wished for.  Again, Lady Jane’s health was spoken of as precarious, less actual illness—­I said to myself—­than mere delicacy requiring the bluer sky and warmer airs of Italy.  Perhaps her spirits were affected—­some mental malady—­some ill-placed passion—­que sais je?  In fact my brain run on so fast in its devisings, that by a quick process, less logical than pleasing, I satisfied myself that the lovely Lady Jane Callonby was actually in love, with whom let the reader guess at.  And Lord Callonby too, about to join the ministry—­well, all the better to have one’s father-in-law in power—­promotion is so cursed slow now a-days.  And lastly, the sly allusion to the commissions—­the mechancete of introducing her name to interest me.  With such materials as these to build upon, frail as they may seem to others, I found no difficulty in regarding myself as the dear friend of the family, and the acknowledged suitor of Lady Jane.

In the midst, however, of all my self-gratulation, my eye fell upon the letter of Emily Bingham, and I suddenly remembered how fatal to all such happy anticipations it might prove.  I tore it open in passionate haste and read—­

“My dear Mr. Lorrequer—­As from the interview we have had this morning I am inclined to believe that I have gained your affections, I think that I should ill requite such a state of your feeling for me, were I to conceal that I cannot return you mine—­in fact they are not mine to bestow.  This frank avowal, whatever pain it may have cost me, I think I owe to you to make.  You will perhaps say, the confession should have been earlier; to which I reply, it should have been so, had I known, or even guessed at the nature of your feelings for me.  For—­and