"What does the----" I am afraid I mentally said 'old girl'--"want, I wonder? It must be really serious, or she would have shammed agitation. There is something about this oily calm which is rather portentous. Then she has taken care to have every member of the family out of the house. What is she ringing the bell for now?" "Tell Lady Ursula when she comes home that I am engaged particularly, and will come up and see her in her bedroom before she goes to bed," said Lady Broadhem to the servant who answered it. "Does not Lady Ursula know of my having come to town in answer to your summons?" I asked. "No, dear child; why should I inflict my troubles upon her? Even Broadhem, to whom I was obliged to speak more openly, only suspects the real state of the case. I have reserved my full confidence for my future son-in-law." I lifted up my eyes with a rapturous expression, and played with a paper-knife. She wanted me to help her on with an obvious remark, which I declined to make; so, after a pause, she went on, with a deep sigh,---- "What sad news we keep on getting of those poor dear Confederates, Frank!" "Let us hope they will recover," said I, encouragingly. "Oh, but they do keep on falling so, it is quite dreadful." "There was no great number of them fell at Wilmington." "How stupid I am!" she said; "my poor mind gets quite bewildered. I was thinking of stock, not men; they went down again three more yesterday, and my broker declines altogether to carry them on from one account to another any more. I bought at 60, and they have done nothing but go down ever since. I generally go by Lord Staggerton's advice, and he recommended me to sell a bear some months ago; but that stupid little Spiffy Goldtip insisted that it was only a temporary depression, and now he says how could he know that President Davis would replace Johnston by Hood." "Very tiresome of Davis: but you should have employed more than one broker," I remarked. "Persons of limited capital and speculative tendencies should operate mysteriously. Your right hand should not know what your left hand is doing."