h a fairy
touch when he evinced too wild a desire to dash his brains against the
wall.

At all the sleighing parties, also, Miss Lesbia's form was invariably
observed in Mr. Leigh's cutter, with a violet and white "cloud" matching
the robe borders and ribbons on the bells; and he and the "Tee-to-tum"
spun round together in half the valses of every ball during the winter.

Perhaps, after all, the attachment might have lived and died without
exceeding the "muffin" phase, had not the "beauty," Captain of the
battery cut in, and made rather strong running, too, partly because he
considered her "fetching," and partly, he said, "from regard to Leigh,
who was making an ass of himself."

Jealousy turned philandering into earnest. Theodore went straight to the
maiden aunt, with whom Miss Jones resided, and, after most vehement
badgering, got her consent to a private marriage within three days. The
poor spinster, though much flustered, knowing his attentions to Lesbia
had been a good deal talked about, felt almost relieved to have it
settled respectably, though so abruptly.

On the appointed day, having obtained a week's leave, Theodore, with his
best man, the last joined subaltern, dashed up to the church-door in a
cutter, just in time to receive Lesbia and her bewildered chaperone.

After the ceremony, they started off for their week's honeymoon to the
Falls; and the best man, absolved from secrecy, spread the news through
the regiment.

Theodore had scribbled off the intelligence in reckless desperation to
his father, of whom he was the only child, and Sir Timothy Leigh, a proud
and ambitious man, never forgave the irrevocable piece of folly so
cavalierly announced to him.

Theodore received a letter from the family lawyer, couched in the terms
of sorrowful reprehension such functionaries usually assume on similar
occasions.

"It was Mr. Vellum's painful duty to inform him that Sir Timothy would
decline to receive him on his return to England; that two hundred a year
would be placed annually to his credit at Cox's; but the estates not
being entailed, that was the utmost farthing he need ever expect from
him."

Such was the gist of the communication, and Theodore, hardened by his
father's severity, and unable to bear the privations of a narrow income,
absented himself more and more from their wretched lodgings, and tried to
drown his cares by drinking himself into a state of semi-idiocy.

There is little more to re