can I keep him from his place in a narrative that is
made to revolve more or less upon its own wheels. Algernon went to
bed, completely forgetting Edward and his own misfortunes, under the
influence of the opiate of the order for one thousand pounds, to
be delivered to him upon application. The morning found him calmly
cheerful, until a little parcel was brought to his door, together with
a note from Mrs. Lovell, explaining that the parcel contained those
jewels, his precious gifts of what she had insultingly chosen to call
"esteem" for her.

Algernon took it in his hand, and thought of flinging it through the
window; but as the window happened to be open, he checked the impulse,
and sent it with great force into a corner of the room: a perfectly
fool-like proceeding, for the fool is, after his fashion, prudent, and
will never, if he can help it, do himself thorough damage, that he may
learn by it and be wiser.

"I never stand insult," he uttered, self-approvingly, and felt manlier.
"No; not even from you, ma'am," he apostrophized Mrs. Lovell's portrait,
that had no rival now upon the wall, and that gave him a sharp fight
for the preservation of his anger, so bewitching she was to see. Her not
sending up word that she wished him to come to her rendered his battle
easier.

"It looks rather like a break between us," he said. "If so, you won't
find me so obedient to your caprices, Mrs. Margaret L.; though you are a
pretty woman, and know it. Smile away. I prefer a staunch, true sort of
a woman, after all. And the colonies it must be, I begin to suspect."
This set him conjuring before his eyes the image of Rhoda, until he
cried, "I'll be hanged if the girl doesn't haunt me!" and considered the
matter with some curiosity.

He was quickly away, and across the square of Lincoln's Inn Fields to
the attorney's firm, where apparently his coming was expected, and he
was told that the money would be placed in his hands on the following
day. He then communicated with Edward, in the brief Caesarian tongue
of the telegraph: "All right. Stay. Ceremony arranged." After which, he
hailed a skimming cab, and pronouncing the word "Epsom," sank back in
it, and felt in his breast-pocket for his cigar-case, without casting
one glance of interest at the deep fit of cogitation the cabman had been
thrown into by the suddenness of the order.

"Dash'd if it ain't the very thing I went and gone and dreamed last
night," said the cabman, as he