the desert to a ground where camels' hoofs are marked in the
clay, and traces of withered herbage are yet visible, you know that
water was there once; so the place in Pen's mind was no longer green,
and the fons lacrymarum was dried up.

He used this simile one morning to Warrington, as the latter sate over
his pipe and book, and Pen, with much gesticulation according to his
wont when excited, and with a bitter laugh, thumped his manuscript down
on the table, making the tea-things rattle, and, the blue milk dance
in the jug. On the previous night he had taken the manuscript out of
a long-neglected chest, containing old shooting jackets, old Oxbridge
scribbling-books, his old surplice, and battered cap and gown, and other
memorials of youth, school, and home. He read in the volume in bed until
he fell asleep, for the commencement of the tale was somewhat dull, and
he had come home tired from a London evening party.

"By Jove!" said Pen, thumping down his papers, "when I think that these
were written but very few years ago, I am ashamed of my memory. I
wrote this when I believed myself be eternally in love with that little
coquette, Miss Amory. I used to carry down verses to her, and put them
into the hollow of a tree, and dedicate them 'Amori.'"

"That was a sweet little play upon words," Warrington remarked, with a
puff "Amory--Amori. It showed proof of scholarship. Let us hear a bit of
the rubbish." And he stretched over from his easy-chair, and caught
hold of Pen's manuscript with the fire-tongs, which he was just using in
order to put a coal into his pipe. Thus, in possession of the volume,
he began to read out from the 'Leaves from the Life-book of Walter
Lorraine.'

"'False as thou art beautiful! heartless as thou art fair! mockery of
Passion!' Walter cried, addressing Leonora; 'what evil spirit hath sent
thee to torture me so? O Leonora.----'"

"Cut that part," cried out Pen, making a dash at the book, which,
however, his comrade would not release. "Well! don't read it out at any
rate. That's about my other flame, my first--Lady Mirabel that is now.
I saw her last night at Lady Whiston's. She asked me to a party at her
house, and said that, as old friends, we ought to meet oftener. She has
been seeing me any time these two years in town, and never thought
of inviting me before; but seeing Wenham talking to me, and Monsieur
Dubois, the French literary man, who had a dozen orders on, and might
have passed for a