“One of the oldest and vulgarest of all passions--jealousy! Sophy had heard that I was attached to your niece. Some good-natured gossip went so far as to say we were privately married. My old uncle, who only about once in a quarter of a century cares what his family are doing, wrote me a very insulting letter, reminding me of the year-long benefits he had bestowed upon me, and, at the close, categorically demanded ‘Are you married to her?’ I wrote back four words, ‘I wish I was,’ and there ended all our intercourse. Since I have won certain distinctions, however, I have heard that he wants to make submission, and has even hinted to my lawyer a hope that the name of Calvert is not to be severed from the old estate of Rocksley Manor; but there will be time enough to tell you about all these things. What did your nieces say to that note of Sophy’s?” “Nothing. They never saw it Never knew I wrote to her.” “Most discreetly done on your part I cannot say how much I value the judgment you exercised on this occasion.” The old lady set much store by such praise, and grew rather prolix about all the considerations which led her to adopt the wise course she had taken. He was glad to have launched her upon a sea where she could beat, and tack, and wear at will, and leave him to go back to his own thoughts. “And so,” said he, at last, “they are to be married before Christmas?” “Yes; that is the plan.” “And then she will return with him to India, I take it” She rodded. “Poor girl! And has she not one friend in all the world to tell her what a life is before her as the wife of a third--no, but tenth-rate official--in that dreary land of splendour and misery, where nothing but immense wealth can serve to gloss over the dull uniformity of existence, and where the income of a year is often devoted to dispel the ennui of a single day? India, with poverty, is the direst of all penal settlements. In the bush, in the wilds of New Zealand, in the far-away islands of the Pacific, you have the free air and healthful breezes of heaven. You can bathe without having an alligator for your companion, and lie down on the grass without a cobra on your carotid; but, in India, life stands always face to face with death, and death in some hideous form.” “How you terrify me!” cried she, in a voice of intense emotion. “I don’t want to terrify, I want to warn. If it were ever my fate to have a marriageable daughter, and some petty magistrate--some small district judge of Bengal--asked her for a wife, I’d say to my girl, ‘Go and be a farm servant in New Caledonia. Milk cows, rear lambs, wash, scrub, toil for your daily bread in some land where poverty is not deemed the ‘plague;’ but don’t encounter life in a society where to be poor is to be despicable--where narrow means are a stigma of disgrace.’” “Joseph says nothing of all this. He writes like one well contented with his lot, and very hopeful for the future.”