overty.

Now the entire life of Mr. John Eames was pervaded by a great secret;
and although he never, in those days, alluded to the subject in
conversation with any man belonging to the office, yet the secret was
known to them all. It had been historical for the last four or five
years, and was now regarded as a thing of course. Mr. John Eames was
in love, and his love was not happy. He was in love, and had long
been in love, and the lady of his love was not kind to him. The
little history had grown to be very touching and pathetic, having
received, no doubt, some embellishments from the imaginations of the
gentlemen of the Income-tax Office. It was said of him that he had
been in love from his early boyhood, that at sixteen he had been
engaged, under the sanction of the nobleman now deceased and of the
young lady's parents, that contracts of betrothal had been drawn up,
and things done very unusual in private families in these days, and
that then there had come a stranger into the neighbourhood just as
the young lady was beginning to reflect whether she had a heart of
her own or not, and that she had thrown her parents, and the noble
lord, and the contract, and poor Johnny Eames to the winds, and had--
Here the story took different directions, as told by different men.
Some said the lady had gone off with the stranger and that there had
been a clandestine marriage, which afterwards turned out to be no
marriage at all; others, that the stranger suddenly took himself off,
and was no more seen by the young lady; others that he owned at last
to having another wife,--and so on. The stranger was very well known
to be one Mr. Crosbie, belonging to another public office; and there
were circumstances in his life, only half known, which gave rise to
these various rumours. But there was one thing certain, one point
as to which no clerk in the Income-tax Office had a doubt, one fact
which had conduced much to the high position which Mr. John Eames now
held in the estimation of his brother clerks,--he had given this Mr
Crosbie such a thrashing that no man had ever received such treatment
before and lived through it. Wonderful stories were told about that
thrashing, so that it was believed, even by the least enthusiastic
in such matters, that the poor victim had only dragged on a crippled
existence since the encounter. "For nine weeks he never said a word
or eat a mouthful," said one young clerk to a younger clerk who
was just ente