eux? and would
she, poor and destitute, the daughter of an alien and an exile, would
she have spontaneously relinquished any hope of obtaining that alliance
which maidens of the loftiest houses of England had not disdained to
desire? Thus confused and incoherent, but thus yearning fondly towards
her image and its imagined purity, did my thoughts daily and hourly
array themselves; and, in proportion as I suffered common ties to drop
from me one by one, those thoughts clung the more tenderly to that
which, though severed from the rich argosy of former love, was still
indissolubly attached to the anchor of its hope.

It was during this period of revived affection that I received the
following letter from my uncle:--

I thank thee for thy long letter, my dear boy; I read it over three
times with great delight. Ods fish, Morton, you are a sad Pickle, I
fear, and seem to know all the ways of the town as well as your old
uncle did some thirty years ago! 'Tis a very pretty acquaintance with
human nature that your letters display. You put me in mind of little
Sid, who was just about your height, and who had just such a pretty,
shrewd way of expressing himself in simile and point. Ah, it is easy to
see that you have profited by your old uncle's conversation, and that
Farquhar and Etherege were not studied for nothing.

But I have sad news for thee, my child, or rather it is sad for me to
tell thee my tidings. It is sad for the old birds to linger in their
nest when the young ones take wing and leave them; but it is merry for
the young birds to get away from the dull old tree, and frisk it in the
sunshine,--merry for them to get mates, and have young themselves. Now,
do not think, Morton, that by speaking of mates and young I am going to
tell thee thy brothers are already married; nay, there is time enough
for those things, and I am not friendly to early weddings, nor to speak
truly, a marvellous great admirer of that holy ceremony at any age; for
the which there may be private reasons too long to relate to thee now.
Moreover, I fear my young day was a wicked time,--a heinous wicked time,
and we were wont to laugh at the wedded state, until, body of me, some
of us found it no laughing matter.

But to return, Morton,--to return to thy brothers: they have both left
me; and the house seems to me not the good old house it did when ye
were all about me; and, somehow or other, I look now oftener at the
churchyard than I was wont t