rowfully, "and I hope you
like it."

And with this they went their several ways; Jack alone lingering in the
garden in the hope to have one word with Julia, but she did not return,
and his "watch on deck," as he called it, was not relieved.

CHAPTER LXI. LADY CULDUFF'S LETTER

A long letter, a letter of several pages, from Marion, reached the
villa; and though it is not my intention to ask the reader to listen to
it textually or throughout, I crave permission to give certain parts of
its contents.

As Lady Culduff prospered in the world, she became what she thought
"devout," and perpetually reminded all around her that she was well
aware she was living in a very sinful world, and keeping daily company
with transgressors; and she actually brought herself to believe that by
a repeated reference to the wickedness of this life, she was entering a
formal protest against sin, and qualifying herself, at this very cheap
price, for something much better hereafter.

She was--and it was a pet phrase with her--"resigned" to everything:
resigned to Lord Culduff's being made a grand cross and an ambassador,
with the reasonable prospect of an earldom; resigned to her own great
part--and was it not a great part?--in this advancement; resigned to be
an ambassadress! That she was resigned to the ruin and downfall of her
family, especially if they should have the delicacy and good taste to
hide themselves somewhere, and not obtrude that ruin and downfall on the
world, was plainly manifest; and when she averred that, come what might,
we ought to be ever assured that all things were for the best, she meant
in reality to say, it was a wise dispensation that sent herself to live
in a palace at Pera, and left her brothers and sisters to shiver out
existence in barbarism.

There was not a shadow of hypocrisy in all this. She believed every word
she said upon it. She accepted the downfall of her family as her share
of those ills which are the common lot of humanity; and she was very
proud of the fortitude that sustained her under this heavy trial, and of
that resignation that enabled her not to grieve over these things in an
unseemly fashion, or in any way that might tell on her complexion.

"After that splendid success of Culduff's at Naples," wrote she, "of
which the newspapers are full, I need not remind you that we ought to
have had Paris, and, indeed, must have had it, but the Ministry made
it a direct and personal favor of Cu