"My dear old fellow," said I, putting my hand on Grandon's shoulder, "my time is come at last. Haven't you remarked what low spirits I have been in since dinner? I can't bear it for another twenty-four hours! You know my impulsive sensitive nature. I must know my fate at once from her own lips." "Whose own lips?" said Grandon, with his eyes very wide open. "Lady Ursula's, of course!" I replied. "I knew her very well as a child, so there is nothing very sudden about it. "Well, considering you have never seen her since, I don't quite agree with you," he said, in a deeper tone than usual. "In your own interest, wait till you know a little more of her." "Not another day! Good-night!" and I turned from him abruptly. "I'll put myself out of suspense to-morrow, and keep the public in it for a month," thought I, as I penned the above for their benefit, after which I indulged in two hours of troubled sleep. [Illustration] PART II. MADNESS. FLITYVILLE, _March 20_. As the event which I am about to recount forms the turning-point of my life--unless, indeed, something still more remarkable happens, which I do not at present foresee, to turn me back again--I do not feel that it would be either becoming, or indeed possible, for me to maintain that vein of easy cheerfulness which has characterised my composition hitherto. What is fun to you, O my reader! may be death to me; and nothing can be further from my intention than to excite the smallest tendency to risibility on your part at my misfortunes or trials. You will already have guessed what these are; but how to recur to those agonising details, how to present to you the picture of my misery in its true colours,--nothing but the stern determination to carry out my original design, and the conscientious conviction that "the story of my life from month to month" may be made a profitable study to my fellow-men, could induce me in this cold-blooded way to tear open the still unhealed wound. I came down to breakfast rather late on the morning following the events narrated in the last chapter. Broadhem and Grandon had already vanished from the scene; so had Mr Wog, who went up to town to see what he called "the elephant,"--an American expression, signifying "to gain experience of the world." The phrase originated in an occurrence at a menagerie, and as upon this occasion Mr Wog applied it to the opening of Parliament, it was not altogether inappropriate. I found still lingering over the _debris_ of breakfast my host and hostess, Lady Broadhem and her daughters, the Bishop and Chundango. The latter appeared to be having all the talk to himself, and, to give him his due, his conversation was generally entertaining.