and expected a fierce love-suit on my part I accordingly spiked my heavy artillery, and assumed an attitude of peace- like indolence. I lounged about, chiefly alone; neither avoided nor sought her, and, if I did nothing more, I sorely puzzled her as to what I could mean by my conduct. This was so far a success that it excited her interest, and I saw that she watched and was studying me. She even made faint attempts at little confidences: ‘Saw I was unhappy--had something on my mind;’ and, for the matter of that, I had plenty--plenty on my conscience, too, if nature had been cruel enough to have inflicted me with one. I, of course, said ‘No’ to all these insinuations. I was not happy nor unhappy. If I sat at the table of life, and did not eat, it was because I had no great appetite. The entertainment did not amuse me much, but I had nowhere particularly to go to. She went one day so far as to hint whether I was not crossed in love? But I assured her not, and I saw her grow very pale as I said it. I even suggested, that though one might have two attacks of the malady, like the measles, the second one was always mild, and never hurt the constitution. Having thus piqued her a little about myself, I gradually unsettled her opinion on other things, frightened her by how the geologists contradict Genesis, and gave her to choose between Monsieur Cuvier and Moses. As for India, I made her believe that we were all heartily ashamed of what we were doing there, spoke of the Hindoo as the model native, and said that if the story of our atrocities were written, Europe would rise up and exterminate us. Hence I had not taken the C.B., nor the V.C., nor any other alphabetical glories. In a word, Drayton, I got her into that frame of resdessness and fever in which all belief smacks of foolish credulity, and the commonest exercise of trust seems like the indulgence of a superstition.