Dear Jack, If this letter is wild, and incoherent, and rhapsodical, be sparing of your astonishment and blame. A scribe in my state of mind is not responsible for his epistles. Therefore be patient and read this letter carefully, for herein you will find a reason for these excuses. If you do not find my explanation all-sufficient, then you are not the sympathetic friend I took you for. What, indeed, is the use of friendship if it does not encourage and sympathize and congratulate? Were you in love--which you are not, judging from your cynical letters--I would patiently listen to your maunderings, so hearken to mine. If you wonder at this preamble learn the reason in three sentences. I love her! She loves me! We are engaged. Here I consider you have an ample explanation. Now, do not repeat that time-honoured sneer, "I told you so," and chuckle cynically over my capture by Cupid. It is true that he has chained me, but I glory in such bonds. Did you but see her face and hear her voice you would no longer wonder at my surrender. Who conquers Mars may be beaten by Venus. There is a classical nut for your cracking. Doubtless you consider events have moved speedily, seeing I have thus wooed and won my future wife in so short a space of time. You are perfectly right in such supposition. The events of a year have been crammed into seven days. Every hour has brought forth a surprise, and the result is--as above. My position has been anything but pleasant of late; but now I trust my troubles are over, though, according to the unfulfilled portion of Mother Jericho's prophecy, the worst are still to come. A pleasant prospect, truly! but one rendered endurable by my present happiness. Miss Linisfarne is the parent of my troubles and happiness. I told you about her in my last letters. A faded beauty in ill-health, who is my tenant at the Court. Ignorant of my identity, she thought I was simply a decayed gentleman, reduced to poverty and to the shelter of a caravan. With that inconsistency which is so noticeable a feature of the sex, she ignored my vagabondage, and, in the character of a broken-down gentleman, invited me to the Court. For some inexplicable reason she took a violent fancy to me, and ultimately proposed to marry me. You look surprised, and frown,--the first, at the information; the second, that I should impart it to you, and thus betray a woman's folly.