gentleman as you and I can hope to meet again in life!" I had spoken earnestly, and I saw that I had produced the impression I desired. Then I related to Adolph all that I knew, and having driven conviction home to him, we made a solemn compact to do our best to open Sydney's eyes to the infamous scheme of which he was the victim. Adolph was to act implicitly under my instructions; I remember how troubled he was when he left me, and I judged it well that he should be left to himself in his suffering. Poor lad! It was his first experience in human treachery, and he suffered the more that his heart was confiding and tender. On this evening it was that Sydney, in my company, lashed himself into a furious state of indignation at a slight that had been put upon Grace in his hearing. It occurred in a club, and Sidney, with a violent display of temper, defended Grace, and attacked the character of the gentleman who had uttered a simple word or two to Grace's disparagement. Sydney was not content with attacking the character of the gentleman; he attacked the lady members of the gentleman's family, with whom he had once been intimate, and called them a parcel of scheming, jealous jades, who could not believe in purity because they did not themselves possess it. He exceeded the bounds of moderation, it must be confessed, and a scene ensued that was not soon forgotten. "The injustice of the world," cried Sydney to me, "is enough to drive an earnest man mad--as I have no doubt it has driven many. That gentleman and his mother and sisters would lower their false faces to the ground before Lady this and Lady that"--he mentioned the names of the ladies, but it is unnecessary to set them down here--"who are wealthy and highly connected, but who are not fit to tie the shoe-strings of my poor persecuted Grace, nor the shoe-strings of any girl who has a spark of virtue in her. You have seen Grace times enough now, Fred, to be able to appreciate her purity, her modesty, her innocence, at their proper worth. There lives not on earth a woman more worthy the love and esteem of man!" Then he broke out into a rhapsody of extravagant adoration which would have amazed me had I not been acquainted with the intense chivalry of his nature. The more Grace was vilified, the more stoutly would he stand by her; the stronger the detraction, the stronger his love. It was not while he was in such a humour as this that I could commence to play the part of an honest Iago.