and his own adventures on the road."

"I have very little to tell, and less time to tell it I must embark in
about half an hour."

"And where for?"

"For home."

"So that if it had not been for Skeff's indiscretion I should not have
seen you?" said she, coldly.

"Not at this moment,--not in this guise."

"Indeed!" And there was another pause.

"I hope Bella is better. Has she quite recovered?" asked he.

"She is quite well again; she 'll be sorry to have missed you, Tony. She
wanted, besides, to tell you how happy it made her to hear of all your
good fortune."

"My good fortune! Oh, yes--to be sure. It was so unlooked for," added
he, with a faint smile, "that I have hardly been able to realize it yet;
that is, I find myself planning half-a-dozen ways to earn my bread, when
I suddenly remember that I shall not need them."

"And I hope it makes you happy, Tony?"

"Of course it does. It enables me to make my mother happy, and to secure
that we shall not be separated. As for myself alone, my habits are
simple enough, and my tastes also. My difficulty will be, I suppose, to
acquire more expensive ones."

"It is not a very hard task, I believe," said she, smiling.

"Not for others, perhaps; but I was reared in narrow fortune, Alice,
trained to submit to many a privation, and told too--I 'm not sure very
wisely--that such hardships are all the more easily borne by a man of
good blood and lineage. Perhaps I did not read my lesson right. At all
events, I thought a deal more of my good blood than other people were
willing to accord it; and the result was, it misled me."

"Misled you! and how--in what way?"

"Is it you who ask me this--you, Alice, who have read me such wise
lessons on self-dependence, while Lady Lyle tried to finish my education
by showing the evils of over-presumption; and you were both right,
though I did n't see it at the time."

"I declare I do not understand you, Tony!" said she.

"Well, I 'll try to be clearer," said he, with more animation. "From the
first day I knew you, Alice, I loved you. I need not say that all the
difference in station between us never affected my love. You were too
far above me in every gift and grace to make rank, mere rank, ever
occur to my mind, though others were good enough to jog my memory on the
subject."

"Others! of whom are you speaking?"

"Your brother Mark, for one; but I don't want to think of these things.
I loved you, I say; and to that degree t