I am bitter--naughty--I know I am. I was even cross to Colin to-day, when he wanted me to take a walk with him, and then persisted in staying beside me indoors. Colin likes me--Colin is kind to me--Colin would walk twenty miles for an hour of his old playmate's company--he told me so. And yet I was cross with him. Oh, I am wicked, wicked! But my heart is so sore. One look into eyes I knew--one clasp of a steadfast kindly hand, and I would be all right again. Merry, happy, brave--afraid of nothing and nobody--not even of myself; it cannot be so bad a self if it is worth being cared for. I can't see to write. There now, there now--as one would say to a child in a passion--cry your heart out, it will do you good, Theodora. After that, I should have courage to tell the last thing, which, this evening, put a climax to my ill-humours, and in some sense cleared them off, thunder-storm fashion. An incident so unexpected, a story so ridiculous, so cowardly, that had Francis been less to me than my expected brother-in-law, I declare I would have cut his acquaintance for ever and ever, and never spoken to him again. I was sitting in a corner of the billiard-room, which, when the players are busy, is as quiet unobserved a nook as any in the house. I had a book--but read little, being stopped by the eternal click-clack of the billiard-balls. There were only three in the room--Francis, Augustus, and Colin Granton, who came up and asked my leave to play just one game. My leave? How comical! I told him he might play on till Midsummer, for all I cared. They were soon absorbed in their game, and their talk between whiles went in and out of my head as vaguely as the book itself had done, till something caught my attention. “I say, Charteris, you know Tom Turton? He was the cleverest fellow at a cannon. It was refreshing only to watch him hold the cue, so long as his hand was steady, and even after he got a little “screwed.” He was a wild one, rather. What has become of him?” “I cannot say. Doctor Urquhart might, in whose company I last met him.” Augustus stared. “Well, that is a good joke. Doctor Urquhart with Tom Turton. I was nothing to boast of myself before I married; but Tom Turton!'' “They seemed intimate enough; dined, and went to the theatre together and finished the evening--I really forget where. Your friend the doctor made himself uncommonly agreeable.” “Urquhart and Tom Turton,” Augustus kept repeating, quite unable to get over his surprise at such a juxtaposition; from which I conclude that Mr. Turton, whose name I never heard before, was one of the not too creditable associates of my brother-in-law in his bachelor days. When, some one calling, he went out, Colin took up the theme; being also familiar with this notorious person, it appeared. “Very odd, Doctor Urquhart's hunting in couples with Tom Turton. However, I hope he may do him good--there was room for it.”