I crushed it up into a ball, and then, spreading it out on the head of the inverted cask, read, while my hands trembled, and my heart grew sick with many contending emotions, a long paragraph which Phil indicated, and which ran somewhat as follows, my friend the while standing quietly by my side, manipulating a cheroot prior to lighting it with a cinder from my little fire. The piece of fashionable gossip was headed, "Marriage of the Right Hon. the Earl of Aberconway and the Lady Estelle Cressingham;" and detailed, in the usual style of such announcements, that, on a certain--I forget which day _now_--the lovely and secluded little village of Walcot, in Hampshire, presented quite a festive appearance in honour of the above-named event, the union of the young and beautiful daughter of the late Earl of Naseby to our veteran statesman; that along the route from the gates of Walcot Park to the porch of the village church were erected several arches of evergreen, tastefully surmounted by banners and appropriate mottoes. Among the former "we observed the arms of the now united noble houses of Potter and Cressingham, and the standards of the Allies now before Sebastopol. The beautiful old church of Walcot was adorned with flowers, and crowded to excess long before the hour appointed. The lovely bride was charmingly attired in white satin, elegantly trimmed with white lace, and wore a wreath of orange blossoms on her splendid dark hair, covered with a long veil, _à la juive_. The bridesmaids, six in number, were as follows:" but I omit their names as well as the list of gifts bestowed upon the noble bride, who was given away by her cousin, the young earl. "Lord Aberconway, with his ribbon of the Garter, wore the peculiar uniform of the Pottersleigh Yeomanry." "Rather a necessary addition," said Phil, parenthetically; "his lordship could scarcely have figured in the ribbon alone." "--Yeomanry, of which gallant regiment he is colonel, and looked hale and well for his years. After a choice _déjeûner_ provided for a distinguished circle, the newly-wedded pair left Walcot Park, amid the most joyous demonstrations, for Pottersleigh Hall, the ancestral seat of the noble Earl, to spend the honeymoon." "A precious flourish of penny whistles!" said Phil, when I had read, deliberately folded the paper, and thrust it into the fire, to the end that I might not be troubled by the temptation to read it all over again; and then we looked at each other steadily for a minute in silence. Forsaken! I remembered my strange forebodings now, when I had ridden to Walcot Park. They were married--married, she and old Pottersleigh! My heart seemed full of tears, yet when seating myself wearily on the camp-bed, I laughed bitterly and scornfully, as I thought over the inflated newspaper paragraph, and that the _sangre azul_ of the Earl of Aberconway must be thin and blue indeed, when compared with the red blood of my less noble self.