nce at "the author." "Well, perhaps I am."

Bella clapped her hands with enchanting gaiety. "Then, tell me this
moment; I am in agonies to know!"

"It is no great mystery," smiled Falkenstein. "I fancy you are
acquainted with the unknown."

"You don't mean it!" cried Bella, in a state of ecstasy. "Have you
written it, then?"

"I'm afraid I can't lay claim to the honor."

"Who can it be? Oh, do tell me! How enchanting!" cried Miss Cashranger;
"I am wild to hear. Somebody I know, you say? Is it--is it Captain
Tweed?"

"No, it isn't," laughed Falkenstein. Elliot Tweed--Idiot Tweed, as they
all call him--who was hanging after Bella, abhorred all caligraphy, and
wrote his own name with one _e_.

"Mr. Dashaway, then?"

"Dash never scrawled anything but I. O. U.s."

"Lord Flippertygibbett, perhaps?"

"Wrong again. Flip took up a pen once too often, when he signed his
marriage register, to have any leanings to goose quills."

"Charlie Montmorency, then?"

"Reads nothing but his betting-book and _Bell's Life_."

"Dear me! how tiresome. Who can it be? Wait a moment. Let me see. Is it
Major Powell?"

"Guess again. He wouldn't write, save in Indian fashion, with his
tomahawk on his enemies' scalps."

"How provoking!" cried Bella, exasperated. "Stop: is it Mr. Beauchamp?"

"No; he scribbles for six-and-eightpences too perseveringly to have time
for anything, except ruining his clients."

"Dr. Montressor, then?"

"Try once more. His prescriptions bring him too many guineas for him to
waste ink on any other purpose."

"How stupid I am! Perhaps--perhaps---- Yet no, it can't be, because he's
at the Cape, and most likely killed, poor fellow. Could it be Cecil
Green?"

Falkenstein laughed. "You needn't go so far as Kaffirland; try a little
nearer home. Think over the _ladies_ you know."

"The ladies! Then it _is_ a woman!" cried Bella. "Well, I should never
have believed it. Who can she be? How I shall admire her, and envy her!
A lady! Can it be darling Flora?"

"No. If your pet friend can get through an invitation-note of four
lines, the exertion costs her at least a dram of sal volatile."

"How wicked you are," murmured Miss Cashranger, delighted, after the
custom of women, to hear her friend pulled to pieces. "Is it Mrs.
Lushington, then?"

"Wrong again. The Lushington has so much business on hand, inditing
rose-hued notes to twenty men at once, and wording them differently, for
fear they may ever be co