I will go and see Frederick Marston. He has been in love for six weeks. In ordinary cases I shrink with unfeigned horror from the conversation of a lover--barley-broth is not more terrible to an alderman, nor metaphysics to a blockhead, nor argument to a wit. But now, in mere self-defence, I will go and see Frederick Marston. He will talk of wood-pigeons and wildernesses, of eyebrows and ringlets, of sympathies and quadrilles, of “meet me by moonlight” and the brightest eyes in the world. I will endure it all; for he will have no thought to waste upon the wickedness of the Duke of Wellington or the disfranchisement of Larry O’Shane. So I spoke in the bitterness of my heart; and, after a brief and painful struggle with a Treasury clerk in the Haymarket, and a narrow escape in Regent Street from the heavy artillery of a Somersetshire divine, I flung myself into my old schoolfellow’s armchair, and awaited his raptures or his apprehensions, as patiently as the wrecked mariner awaits the lions or the savages, when he has escaped from the billow and the blast. “My dear fellow,” said my unhappy friend, and pointed, as he spoke, to a letter which was lying open on the table, “I am the most miserable of fortune’s playthings. It is but a week since every obstacle was removed. The dresses were bespoken; the ring was bought; the Dean had been applied to, and the lawyer was at work. I had written out ten copies of an advertisement, and sold Hambletonian for half his value. Λ plague on all uncles! Sir George has discovered ‘an insuperable objection.’ One may guess his meaning without comment.” “Upon my life, not I! Have you criticized his Correggio?” “Never.” “Have you abused his claret?” “Never.” “You have thinned his preserves, then?” “I never carried a gun there!” “Or slept while his chaplain was preaching?” “I never sat in his pew.” A horrible foreboding came over me. I sat in silent anticipation of the blow which was to overwhelm me. “Oh, my dear friend,” said Frederick after a long pause, “why was I born under so fatal a planet? And why did my second cousin sign that infernal petition?”