Now always, after leaving this good, kind, smiling, cordial, pretty, clever, fascinating, serene, accomplished, hospitable, and altogether unparalleled widow, Jack would calmly, quietly, and deliberately go over to the Bertons', and stay there as long as he could. What for? Was he not merely heaping up sorrow for himself in continuing so ardently this Platonic attachment? For Louie there was no danger. According to Jack, she still kept up her teasing, quizzing, and laughing mood. Jack's break-up with Miss Phillips was a joke, he had confided to her that he had also broken off with Number Three; and, though she could not find out the cause, this became another joke. Finally, his present attitude with regard to the widow was viewed by her as the best joke of all. She assured him that the widow was to be his fate, and that she had driven the others from the field, so as to have him exclusively to herself. And thus Jack alternated and vibrated between the widow and Louie, and all his entanglements were now reduced to these two. Such is a full, frank, fair, free, ample, lucid, and luminous explanation of the progress of affairs, which explanation was necessary in order to make the reader fully understand the full meaning of what follows. CHAPTER XXXIV. JACK'S TRIBULATIONS.--THEY RISE UP IN THE VERY FACE OF THE MOST ASTONISHING GOOD FORTUNES.--FOR, WHAT IS LIKE A LEGACY?--AND THIS COMES TO JACK!--SEVEN THOUSAND POUNDS STERLING PER ANNUM!--BUT WHAT'S THE USE OF IT ALL?--JACK COMES TO GRIEF!--WOE! SORROW! DESPAIR! ALL THE WIDOW! --INFATUATION.--A MAD PROPOSAL.--A MADMAN, A LUNATIC, AN IDIOT, A MARCH HARE, AND A HATTER, ALL ROLLED INTO ONE, AND THAT ONE THE LUCKY YET UNFORTUNATE JACK. Jack had been falling off more and more. I was taken up with the O'Hallorans; he, with those two points between which he oscillated like a pendulum; and our intercourse diminished, until at length days would intervene without a meeting between us. It was in the middle of June. I had not seen Jack for more than a week. Suddenly, I was reminded of him by a startling rumor that reached my ears after every soul in the garrison and in the city had heard it. It referred to Jack. It was nothing about the widow, nothing about Louie, nothing about Marion, nothing about Miss Phillips. It did not refer to duns. He had not been nabbed by the sheriff. He had not put an end to himself. In short, the news was, that an uncle of his had died, and left him a fortune of unknown proportions. _Omne iguotum pro mirifico_, of course; and so up went Jack's fortune to twenty thousand a year. Jack had told me about that uncle, and I had reason to know that it was at least six or seven thousand; and, let me tell you, six or seven thousand pounds per annum isn't to be laughed at.