laid to the account of telegraphic brevity.

He saw Dr. Shrapnel, and spoke to him, as before, to thank him for the
permission to visit his nephew. Nevil he contemplated for the space of
five minutes. He cordially saluted Miss Denham. He kissed Cecilia's
hand.

'All here is going on so well that I am with you for a day or two to-
morrow,' he despatched the message to his wife.

Her case was now the gravest. He could not understand why she desired to
be in Bevisham. She must have had execrable dreams!--rank poison to
mothers.

However, her constitutional strength was great, and his pride in the
restoration of his House by her agency flourished anew, what with fair
weather and a favourable report from Dr. Gannet: The weather was most
propitious to the hopes of any soul bent on dispersing the shadows of
death, and to sportsmen. From the windows of his railway carriage he
beheld the happy sportsmen stalking afield. The birds whirred and
dropped just where he counted on their dropping. The smoke of the guns
threaded to dazzling silver in the sunshine. Say what poor old Nevil
will, or did say, previous to the sobering of his blood, where is there a
land like England? Everard rejoiced in his country temperately. Having
Nevil as well,--of which fact the report he was framing in his mind to
deliver to his wife assured him--he was rich. And you that put
yourselves forward for republicans and democrats, do you deny the
aristocracy of an oaklike man who is young upon the verge of eighty?

These were poetic flights, but he knew them not by name, and had not to