ntleman who has offered her the highest compliment any man has it in
his power to offer any woman, she came to the point in the following
characteristic manner:

"The man I marry must have two things, virtues and vices--you have
neither. You do nothing, and never will do anything but sketch and hum
tunes, and dance and dangle. Forget this folly the day after to-morrow,
my dear Ipsden, and, if I may ask a favor of one to whom I refuse that
which would not be a kindness, be still good friends with her who will
always be

"Your affectionate _Cousin,_

"BARBARA SINCLAIR."

Soon after this effusion she vanished into Perthshire, leaving her
cousin stunned by a blow which she thought would be only a scratch to
one of his character.

Lord Ipsden relapsed into greater listlessness than before he had
cherished these crushed hopes. The world now became really dark and
blank to him. He was too languid to go anywhere or do anything; a
republican might have compared the settled expression of his handsome,
hopeless face with that of most day-laborers of the same age, and
moderated his envy of the rich and titled.

At last he became so pale as well as languid that Mr. Saunders
interfered.

Saunders was a model valet and factotum; who had been with his master
ever since he left Eton, and had made himself necessary to him in their
journeys.

The said Saunders was really an invaluable servant, and, with a world of
obsequiousness, contrived to have his own way on most occasions. He had,
I believe, only one great weakness, that of imagining a beau-ideal of
aristocracy and then outdoing it in the person of John Saunders.

Now this Saunders was human, and could not be eight years with this
young gentleman and not take some little interest in him. He was
flunky, and took a great interest in him, as stepping-stone to his own
greatness. So when he saw him turning pale and thin, and reading one
letter fifty times, he speculated and inquired what was the matter. He
brought the intellect of Mr. Saunders to bear on the question at the
following angle:

"Now, if I was a young lord with 20,000 pounds a year, and all the world
at my feet, what would make me in this way? Why, the liver! Nothing
else.

"And that is what is wrong with him, you may depend."

This conclusion arrived at, Mr. Saunders coolly wrote his convictions
to Dr. Aberford, and desired that gentleman's immediate attention to the
case. An hour or two later, he glided int