I must have been asleep when Catsbach came home, if that night he came home at all. Frightful dreams haunted me all night. A thousand demons came down on me, like the Guards at Waterloo, all playing on broken-winded flutes. Twenty Hamlets, all in sable hat and tumbled silk stockings, whistled "To be, or not to be," through the same detestable instrument. Then I dreamt of Emily Pybus, and instantly she turned into Miss Claribel in the costume of Ophelia. All the scenes of my past life jumbled themselves up into one confused mass. Well-known faces looked in upon me from all sides of the room--Mr Montalban, the old schoolmaster at Puddlecombe, the examiners, Miss de la Rose, and Fitz-Edward--all piping and screaming on that inevitable flute. It showed that a deep blow on my vanity had been inflicted by my failure at Mr Willox's ball. I tried when I awoke to remember whether I had taken opium, I felt so feverish and confused; but the excitement was caused by my injured self-love; and, waking as well as sleeping, I entertained a frantic hatred against Mr Hooker. I determined to take counsel of Catsbach, to whom I had hitherto confided all parts of my history, with the sole concealment of names. I resolved to lay the whole case before him, and ask his advice how to proceed. Should I go to Muswell Hill and take the very office of tutor in music which I had already so indignantly refused in literature and classics? I found I was very much changed since then--or rather that Emily was more attractive, as a pupil, than I had thought her at fourteen years old. There was romance also in becoming acquainted with her in a fictitious character; and I felt less degraded as an unsuccessful musician than I had felt as a disappointed schoolboy. But Catsbach should decide upon it all. In the morning, however, a note was put into my hands--"The incident last night," he said, "makes it too dangerous for us to attend at private parties. You will never be able to preserve your incog. I have got some intimation of the whereabouts of Ellinor. You won't see me for two days. Meantime, go on with rehearsal with Miss Claribel, and on Thursday take her to Chatham. The 'Paragon Royal' will be in ecstasy at your approach, for I have said you will give them five pounds and a supper after the play. I shall be there in plenty of time for the overture, but at present I am off to Guildford, where I suspect my charmer keeps a school. The mistress has been described to me as a perfect angel; and what can be a closer description of my Ellinor? Take care of Miss Claribel's arts. Beauty is a fading flower. So am I.--AUGUSTUS TOOKS." I followed the advice contained in this letter, and perfected myself in Hamlet. Miss Claribel herself began to have hopes of my success; and my mother, in the midst of her rapture with my performance, only insisted more and more on a strict preservation of my incognito. My uncle, she said, was about to return to England. She did not know