tin took up his pen again; and before he went to bed
wrote another letter, whereof more will be seen presently.

He was up before daybreak, and came upon the Park with the morning,
which was clad in the least engaging of the three hundred and sixty-five
dresses in the wardrobe of the year. It was raw, damp, dark, and dismal;
the clouds were as muddy as the ground; and the short perspective
of every street and avenue was closed up by the mist as by a filthy
curtain.

'Fine weather indeed,' Martin bitterly soliloquised, 'to be wandering
up and down here in, like a thief! Fine weather indeed, for a meeting of
lovers in the open air, and in a public walk! I need be departing, with
all speed, for another country; for I have come to a pretty pass in
this!'

He might perhaps have gone on to reflect that of all mornings in the
year, it was not the best calculated for a young lady's coming forth
on such an errand, either. But he was stopped on the road to this
reflection, if his thoughts tended that way, by her appearance at a
short distance, on which he hurried forward to meet her. Her squire,
Mr Tapley, at the same time fell discreetly back, and surveyed the fog
above him with an appearance of attentive interest.

'My dear Martin,' said Mary.

'My dear Mary,' said Martin; and lovers are such a singular kind of
people that this is all they did say just then, though Martin took her
arm, and her hand too, and they paced up and down a short walk that was
least exposed to observation, half-a-dozen times.

'If you have changed at all, my love, since we parted,' said Martin at
length, as he looked upon her with a proud delight, 'it is only to be
more beautiful than ever!'

Had she been of the common metal of love-worn young ladies, she would
have denied this in her most interesting manner; and would have told him
that she knew she had become a perfect fright; or that she had wasted
away with weeping and anxiety; or that she was dwindling gently into an
early grave; or that her mental sufferings were unspeakable; or would,
either by tears or words, or a mixture of both, have furnished him with
some other information to that effect, and made him as miserable as
possible. But she had been reared up in a sterner school than the minds
of most young girls are formed in; she had had her nature strengthened
by the hands of hard endurance and necessity; had come out from her
young trials constant, self-denying, earnest, and devoted; h