empty flask yonder for all your brother Lackington's lease of his peerage! Hear me out I have it from his own lawyers,--from the fellows in Furnival's Inn,--it's up with him; the others are perfectly sure of their verdict There's how it is! And now, Annesley Beecher, you were willing to marry Kit Davis's daughter when you thought you could make her a peeress; now I say, that when you 've nothing, nor haven't a sixpence to bless yourself with, it's Kit himself will give her to you, and say, there's not the other man breathing he'd as soon see the husband of this same Lizzy Davis!” The burst of emotion with which Beecher met this speech was, indeed, the result of very conflicting feelings. Shock at the terrible tidings of his brother's downfall, and the insult to his house and name, mingled with a burst of gratitude to Davis for his fidelity; but stronger and deeper than these was another sentiment,--for, smile if you will, most sceptical reader, the man was in love, after _his_ fashion. I do not ask of you to believe that he felt as you or I might or ought to feel the tender passion. I do not seek to persuade you that the object of his affection, mingled with all his thoughts, swayed them and etherealized them; that she was the theme of many a heart-woven story, the heroine of many an ecstatic dream: still she was one who could elicit from that nature, in all its selfishness, little traits of generous feeling, little bursts of honest sentiment, that made him appear better to his own heart. And so far has the adage truth with it, virtue is its own reward, in the conscious sense of well doing, in the peaceful calm of an unrepining spirit, and, not least of all, in that sympathy which good men so readily bestow upon even faint efforts to win their suffrage. And so he sobbed out something that meant grief and gratitude; hope, fear, and uncertainty--worse than fear--all agitating and distracting him by turns. Very little time did Grog give himself for calmer reflection; away he went at full speed to sketch out their future life. They were to make the tour of Europe, winning all before them. All the joyous part, all the splendor of equipage, retinue, mode of life, and outlay being dictated by Beecher; all the more business detail, the play and the money-getting, devolving upon Davis. Baden, Ems, Wiesbaden, Hamburg, and Aix,--all glowed in the descriptions like fields of foretold glory. How they were to outshine Princes in magnificence and Royal Highnesses in display; the envy of Beecher, of his unvarying luck; the splendor of all his belongings; Lizzy's beauty, tool What a page would he fill in the great gossip calendar of Europe!