“L'homme propose,” &c., says the adage; and the poet tells us an instance, that “those who came to scoff remained to pray.” So in the present case, Mr. Foglass, whose mission was to pump Peter Dalton out of every family secret and circumstance, had opened such an unexpected stream of intelligence upon himself that he was actually carried away in the flood. “You've been badly used, Dalton,” said he, at last. “I may say, infamously treated! Not only your fortune taken away, but your children torn from you!” “Ay, just so.” Dalton liked sympathy too well to cavil about his title to it. “True for you, a harder case than mine you 'll not hear of in a summer's day. My elegant fine place, my beautiful domain, the seat of my ancestors, or, if they were n't, they were my wife's, and that 's all the same; and to be sitting here, in a foreign country r hundreds of miles away from home. Oh dear, oh dear! but that's a change!” For an instant the thought overwhelmed him, and he was silent; then, fixing his eyes on Foglass, he added, in a dreamy soliloquy, “Hundreds of miles away from home, drinking bad brandy, with a deaf chap in a red wig for company.” “I call yours a case of downright oppression, Dalton,” resumed the other, who fortunately overheard nothing of the last remark. “If you had been residing in Persia or the Caucasus even in the Danubian Provinces we 'd have made you a case for the Foreign Office. You 'd have had your compensation, sir. Ay, faith! you 'd have had a good round sum for the murder of your father, old what 's his name? You 'd have had your claim, sir, for the loss of that fine boy the Austrians have taken from you, Mrs. Dalton's wardrobe, and all that sort of thing. I must repeat my conviction, you 've been grossly infamously treated!” “And just to think of my own flesh and blood, Stephen, my uncle!” “I can't think of him, sir! I can't bear to think of him!” cried Foglass, with enthusiasm. “A count of the Empire!” resumed Dalton; “a field-marshal, and a something else, with his Maria Teresa!” “At his age he might give up those habits,” said Foglass, who had converted the Cross of the Empress into a very different relationship. “And now, there 's Kate,” said Dalton, who never heard his comment, “there 's Kate, my own favorite of them all! thinks no more about us than if we did n't belong to her!” “Living in splendor!” mumbled Foglass. “Boundless extravagance!” “Just so! Wasting hundreds flinging the money about like chaff!” “I saw a ball dress of hers myself, at Madame Fanchone's, that was to cost three thousand francs!”