“I’d give--what would I not give?--to have you near me, though in my soul I know all that you’d say; how you’d preach never minding, letting be, and the rest of it, just as if I could cut out some other work for myself tomorrow, and think no more of her. But I cannot. No Drayton, I cannot, Is it not too hard for the fellow who cut his way through Lahore with sixteen followers, and made a lane through her Majesty’s light cavalry, to be worsted, defeated, and disgraced by a young girl, who has neither rank, riches, nor any remarkable beauty to her share, but is simply sustained by the resolve that she’ll not have me? Mind, D., I have given her no opportunity of saying this since I came last here: on the contrary, she would, if questioned, be ready--I’d swear to it she would--to say, ‘Calvert paid me no attentions, nor made any court to me.’ She is very truthful in everything, but who is to say what her woman’s instinct may not have revealed to her of my love? Has not the woman a man loves always a private key to his heart, and doesn’t she go and tumble its contents about, just out of curiosity, ten times a day? Not that she’d ever find a great deal either in or on mine. Neither the indictments for murder or manslaughter, nor that other heavier charge for H. T., have left their traces within my pericardium, and I could stand to back myself not to rave in a compromising fashion if I had a fever to-morrow. But how hollow all this boasting, when that girl within the closed window-shutter yonder defies me--ay, defies me! Is she to go off to her wedding with the inner consciousness of this victory? There’s the thought that is driving me mad, and will, I am certain, end by producing some dire mischief-- what the doctors call a lesion--in this unhappy brain of mine. And now, as I sit here in listless idleness, that other fellow is hastening across Egypt, or ploughing his way through the Red Sea, to come and marry her! I ask you, D., what amount of philosophy is required to bear up under this? “I conclude I shall leave this some time next week--not to come near England, though--for I foresee that it will soon be out where, how, and with whom I have been spending my holidays. Fifty fellows must suspect, and some half-dozen must know all about it America, I take it, must be my ground--as well there as anywhere else--but I can’t endure a plan, so enough of this. Don’t write to me till you hear again, for I shall leave this certainly, though where for, not so certain. “What a deal of trouble and uncertainty that girl might spare me if she’d only consent to say ‘Yes.’ If I see her alone this evening, I half think I shall ask her. “Farewell for a while, and believe me, “Yours ever, “HARRY C.