I had been made a tool of. Confusion! how that cashier must have sniggered at me when I wasn’t looking! how, when I had treated him with the lordly affability that is the marked characteristic of contempt, how must he have revelled in the reflection that he and his sweetheart were making, between them, the most consummate ass that ever walked on two legs, of the very fine gentleman! Here were the dregs of the nauseating dose, and, phew! filthy and bitter they were. It was no medicine. It was rank poison; and my love, sadly emaciated already, and worn out for want of proper nourishment, gave a kick, and expired. Yes, that night, Down dropped my love, My love dropped dead! Blow out your candle, Eugenio, and the sudden extinction of the flame shall illustrate the awful abruptness with which _my_ flame perished. From that night, from that hour of pride made wretched by contempt, Conny was no more to me than the scarecrow that nods its blind head at the birds and flaps its idle rags along the breeze. I was in her power once. My heart had palpitated in the golden meshes of her hair like a robin in a fowler’s net. I was hers--she might have married me. But she had preferred a cashier. She had chosen for her partner a banker’s clerk with frizzy hair; for a breast to lean on, a bosom shaped like a pigeon-pie. Was I going to gnash my teeth and hurl ghastly looks at the moon? Does Abraham Levi burst into tears when a customer finds something more striking and splendid in a piece of paste than in a fine stone? I was a diamond, she might have worn me: she had chosen a Brummagem article instead, and by heavens, Eugenio! no liquid gem distilled from my eyes should add one grain of worth to her outrageous choice! I was at Grove End early next morning, and was met by my uncle, who, without a word, put the letter he had just received from Conny into my hands. “I prophesied you would hear from her,” said he, and began to read.