Our modern contrivances, indeed, for speedily moving about from place to place, and for darting news hither and thither, have a certain appearance of haste and want of dignity when tragedy comes in question. And yet, it is surely a proof of the intrinsic might, of the victorious power of great elementary human emotions, that when they are every now and then called into play, in this decorous age, it is they that triumph, and not the comfortable arrangements which only take into account ease of mind and plenty of purse. Love and hate and despair go striding grimly or gloriously on, and live their lives, and strike their strokes, and sway the minds and souls of those possessed by them, and override the obstacles in their course, as potently now as they did in more picturesque days. Bradshaw and the penny post come in in a parenthesis, and the system of electric telegraphy powerfully supports them, so that we can send the news of our own catastrophes, or of those of our neighbours, with a speed unheard of a century ago, though even before then there was a saying that ‘ill news travels fast.’ Nay, these things, if rightly considered, appear conducive to privacy rather than, as might appear from a superficial glance, to publicity. For any one who reads a startling announcement in letter or newspaper, has the habit, nowadays, of calling it a _canard_, and of saying that it is sure to be contradicted to-morrow. And so it often is. But even if it be not, this beautiful system of Bradshaw, penny post and Co., has no sooner certified the truth of one calamity, than it is ready and to the fore with another, and a worse than the former one; which second tragedy an intelligently interested public devours, even if incredulous, with never-satiated delight; and thus the immediate actors in the events chronicled are in reality left almost as much to themselves and their own devouring emotions, as they would have been before the steam-engine was invented. The world has heard of your domestic drama, that is true; and its details have been printed in every daily paper throughout the kingdom. But the day after, it is provided with something much more remarkable than your twopenny-halfpenny calamity, and has forgotten in a week that it ever heard your name. Some such train of thought was in Michael’s mind, as he paused to consider the sequence in which he should arrange his different tasks on the morrow. Gilbert’s voice broke in upon his reverie. He had risen, and stood with his back against the mantelpiece. ‘Michael, it seems that you and Miss Askam “understand each other,” as the phrase goes.’ ‘Yes, we do,’ said Michael.