"Agreed," said he, as they shot past the Brocas clump, and caught sight of Windsor Castle, looming gigantic through a leaden atmosphere of mist and rain. "Agreed. We are strangers again from henceforth as regards Vanguard--as regards the world. When we meet in society, that is to be clearly understood. But we are _not_ strangers as regards our boy. Once a week you will write and tell me of his welfare. Once a month you will arrange that I shall see him, either with or without witnesses--I care not which. Stay! I have it. You shall tell Vanguard I am the father of your dead sister's child! Capital! I begin to think I have quite a genius for intrigue!" "It is such a tissue of falsehood!" she groaned; "and Frank is so honest--so trustful!" He ground his teeth; but forced himself to answer with unwavering accents and a smooth brow. "I cannot enter into the sentiment of the thing. You know me of old. That is my ultimatum. Take it or leave it. I must run you ashore here, and I can show you the short cut to the hotel." "Agreed!" she whispered, as he handed her along a quivering plank that let her reach the shore dry-shod. "Honour?" "Even among thieves," he added, with a laugh; and thus was the contract ratified on both sides. But short as was that by-way from the river to the Castle Hotel, heavily as the rain came down, enforcing the utmost attention to little Gustave--a perishable article indeed "to be kept dry, this side uppermost"--and fractious as was the deportment of that inexperienced traveller who, thoroughly bewildered with his situation, retained but the one idea of bewailing his lot aloud, while he held on manfully to the new toy, Jin found time to arrive at the noblest, the grandest, and the most important resolution she had ever made in her life. It has always appeared to me there is one infallible criterion of that rare and mysterious affection which goes by the name of true love. "How many _dollars_ do you like her?" asked a Yankee of the friend who expatiated on his devotion to a beloved object; thus gauging, as he considered, that devotion by a standard at once unerring, and not to be misconceived. The friend, "estimating" that he "liked her a thousand dollars," proved himself ten times more to be depended on than his rival, who only "liked her a hundred;" and, in my opinion, there was much knowledge of human nature in this Yankee's mode of valuing an attachment. If you own but five dollars in the world, and you "love your love five-dollars' worth," you are very much in love with her indeed, and have come triumphantly through that strongest test of sincerity which consists in self-sacrifice.