g despatched The Avenger to the coffee-house for an addition to the
dinner, I felt that I must open my breast that very evening to my friend
and chum. As confidence was out of the question with The Avenger in the
hall, which could merely be regarded in the light of an antechamber to
the keyhole, I sent him to the Play. A better proof of the severity
of my bondage to that taskmaster could scarcely be afforded, than
the degrading shifts to which I was constantly driven to find him
employment. So mean is extremity, that I sometimes sent him to Hyde Park
corner to see what o'clock it was.

Dinner done and we sitting with our feet upon the fender, I said to
Herbert, "My dear Herbert, I have something very particular to tell
you."

"My dear Handel," he returned, "I shall esteem and respect your
confidence."

"It concerns myself, Herbert," said I, "and one other person."

Herbert crossed his feet, looked at the fire with his head on one side,
and having looked at it in vain for some time, looked at me because I
didn't go on.

"Herbert," said I, laying my hand upon his knee, "I love--I
adore--Estella."

Instead of being transfixed, Herbert replied in an easy matter-ofcourse
way, "Exactly. Well?"

"Well, Herbert? Is that all you say? Well?"

"What next, I mean?" said Herbert. "Of course I know that."

"How do you know it?" said I.

"How do I know it, Handel? Why, from you."

"I never told you."

"Told me! You have never told me when you have got your hair cut, but I
have had senses to perceive it. You have always adored her, ever since
I have known you. You brought your adoration and your portmanteau here
together. Told me! Why, you have always told me all day long. When you
told me your own story, you told me plainly that you began adoring her
the first time you saw her, when you were very young indeed."

"Very well, then," said I, to whom this was a new and not unwelcome
light, "I have never left off adoring her. And she has come back, a most
beautiful and most elegant creature. And I saw her yesterday. And if I
adored her before, I now doubly adore her."

"Lucky for you then, Handel," said Herbert, "that you are picked out for
her and allotted to her. Without encroaching on forbidden ground, we
may venture to say that there can be no doubt between ourselves of
that fact. Have you any idea yet, of Estella's views on the adoration
question?"

I shook my head gloomily. "Oh! She is thousands of miles away, fro