“I burst into a savage laugh, and when E. pressed me with questions, I told him the whole story. He, too, laughed aloud, but with evident enjoyment. And then he told me how my wily enchantress had borrowed his rustic retreat, and had come to these remote fastnesses in order to exasperate poor vacillating V. into a tangible offer, and how she had succeeded. ‘I was staying with another fellow further south,’ said my friend, ‘and received a few lines from madame the day before yesterday, resigning possession of my shanty, and announcing her approaching espousals; “you must come for the shooting at the Towers next autumn,” she said, in her postscript. Begins to patronize already, you see.’ “After this E. insisted on detaining me to dine with him. Our dinner was ill-cooked, ill-served; and my friend’s conversation was a mixture of London gossip and Norwegian sporting experiences. How I loathed the empty, vapid talk! How I envied this mindless animal his barbarous pleasure in the extermination of other animals, little inferior to himself! I went back to my own quarters in a savage humour, and it seemed to me that my anger included all womankind. ‘I have been fooled and deluded by one woman,’ I said to myself; ‘I will not give myself a prey into the hands of another. C. has chosen to inaugurate our separation. I will not attempt to reverse her decision. My duty I am prepared to do; but I will do no more.’ “Thus resolved, I seated myself at my rough study-table, and wrote a long letter to C.--a very serious, and I think a sufficiently kind, letter--in which I set forth the state of my own feelings. ‘I had hoped that we should find perfect happiness in each other’s society,’ I wrote, in conclusion; ‘I need scarcely tell you that hope has been most cruelly disappointed. You were the first to show that our happiness was an impossibility. You have been the first to sever the tie which I had fondly believed would be lasting. I accept your decision; but I do not consider myself absolved from the duty of providing for your future. For myself, I shall leave Europe for a wilder and more interesting hemisphere, where I shall endeavour to find forgetfulness of the bitter disappointments that have befallen me here.’ “I then told C. how I designed immediately to open an account for her at a certain bank, upon which she would be at liberty to draw at the rate of four hundred a year. ‘Have no fear for the future,’ I wrote; ‘a lady with a settled income of four hundred a year can find friends in any quarter of the globe, and need never be troubled with impertinent inquiries about her antecedents. I shall always be glad to hear of your welfare; and if you will keep me acquainted with your whereabouts--letters addressed to the “Travellers” will always reach me--I shall make a point of seeking you out on my return to England.’