d not but feel that she was still young,
still pretty; and her heart flew back to the day when the linendraper's
fair daughter had been the cynosure of the provincial High Street; when
young officers had lounged to and fro the pavement, looking in at her
window; when ogles and notes had alike beset her, and the dark eyes of
the irresistible Charlie Haughton had first taught her pulse to tremble.
And in her hand lies the letter of Charlie Haughton's particular friend.
She breaks the seal. She reads--a declaration!

Five letters in five days did Jasper write. In the course of those
letters, he explains away the causes for suspicion which Colonel Morley
had so ungenerously suggested. He is no longer anonymous; he is J.
Courtenay Smith. He alludes incidentally to the precocious age in which
he had become "lord of himself, that heritage of woe." This accounts
for his friendship with a man so much his senior as the late Charlie. He
confesses that in the vortex of dissipation his hereditary estates have
disappeared; but he has still a genteel independence; and with the woman
of his heart, etc. He had never before known what real love was, etc.
"Pleasure had fired his maddening soul;" "but the heart,--the heart been
lonely still." He entreated only a personal interview, even though to
be rejected,--scorned. Still, when "he who adored her had left but the
name," etc. Alas! alas! as Mrs. Haughton put down epistle the fifth,
she hesitated; and the woman who hesitates in such a case, is sure, at
least--to write a civil answer.

Mrs. Haughton wrote but three lines,--still they were civil; and
conceded an interview for the next day, though implying that it was but
for the purpose of assuring Mr. J. Courtenay Smith, in person, of her
unalterable fidelity to the shade of his lamented friend.

In high glee Jasper showed Mrs. Haughton's answer to Dolly Poole, and
began seriously to speculate on the probable amount of the widow's
income, and the value of her movables in Gloucester Place. Thence he
repaired to Mrs. Crane; and, emboldened by the hope forever to escape
from her maternal tutelage, braved her scoldings and asked for a couple
of sovereigns. He was sure that he should be in luck that night. She
gave to him the sum, and spared the scoldings. But, as soon as he
was gone, conjecturing from the bravado of his manner what had really
occurred, Mrs. Crane put on her bonnet and went out.

CHAPTER XIII.

Unhappy is the man