n England. Thankless dog that you are! I, by the sovereign efficacy
of my recommendation, got you the place where you are now living in
clover, and yet not a word of gratitude, or even acknowledgment, have
you ever offered in return; but I am coming to see you, and small
conception can you, with your addled aristocratic brains, form of the
sort of moral kicking I have, ready packed in my carpet-bag, destined to
be presented to you immediately on my arrival.

"Meantime I know all about your affairs, and have just got information,
by Brown's last letter, that you are said to be on the point of forming
an advantageous match with a pursy, little Belgian schoolmistress--a
Mdlle. Zenobie, or some such name. Won't I have a look at her when I
come over! And this you may rely on: if she pleases my taste, or if I
think it worth while in a pecuniary point of view, I'll pounce on your
prize and bear her away triumphant in spite of your teeth. Yet I don't
like dumpies either, and Brown says she is little and stout--the better
fitted for a wiry, starved-looking chap like you. "Be on the look-out,
for you know neither the day nor hour when your ----" (I don't wish to
blaspheme, so I'll leave a blank)--cometh.

"Yours truly,

"HUNSDEN YORKE HUNSDEN."

"Humph!" said I; and ere I laid the letter down, I again glanced at the
small, neat handwriting, not a bit like that of a mercantile man, nor,
indeed, of any man except Hunsden himself. They talk of affinities
between the autograph and the character: what affinity was there here?
I recalled the writer's peculiar face and certain traits I suspected,
rather than knew, to appertain to his nature, and I answered, "A great
deal."

Hunsden, then, was coming to Brussels, and coming I knew not when;
coming charged with the expectation of finding me on the summit of
prosperity, about to be married, to step into a warm nest, to lie
comfortably down by the side of a snug, well-fed little mate.

"I wish him joy of the fidelity of the picture he has painted," thought
I. "What will he say when, instead of a pair of plump turtle doves,
billing and cooing in a bower of roses, he finds a single lean
cormorant, standing mateless and shelterless on poverty's bleak cliff?
Oh, confound him! Let him come, and let him laugh at the contrast
between rumour and fact. Were he the devil himself, instead of being
merely very like him, I'd not condescend to get out of his way, or to
forge a smile or a cheerful