h them. Little knew they the while, how, seated in the
rumble close behind, he too revolved the self-same thoughts, asking
himself by what means he could secure so pleasant a harbor of refuge.
Will it not occasionally occur in life that some of those successes on
which we pride ourselves have been in a measure prepared by others,
and that the adversary has helped us to win the game we are so vain of
having scored?

"Well, how do you like them?" said Mrs. Morris, as she smoked her
cigarette at the end of the little garden at Viterbo, after Sir William
and May had said good-night,--"how do you like them, pa?"

"They 're wonderful,--they 're wonderful!" said the Captain, puffing
his weed. "It's a long time since I met anything so fresh as that old
Baronet."

"And with all that," said she, "his great vanity is to think he knows
'the world.'"

"So he may, my dear. I can only say it is n't _your_ world nor _mine_,"
replied he, laughing.

"And yet there is a class in which such men as he are the clever ones,
where their remarks are listened to and their observations treasured,
and where old ladies in turbans and bird-of-paradise feathers pronounce
them 'such well-informed men.' Isn't that the phrase, pa?"

"Yes, that's the phrase. An old article of the 'Quarterly' committed to
memory, some of Dr. Somebody's predictions about the end of the
world, and Solomon's proverbs done into modern English, make a very
well-informed man."

"And a most insupportable bore, besides. After all, papa," said she,
"it is in the landlocked creeks, the little waveless bays, that one must
seek his anchorage, and not in the breezy roadsteads nor the open ocean.
I've thought over the matter a good deal lately, and I believe that to
be the wise choice."

"You are right, Loo," said he; "ease is the great thing,--ease and
security! What settlement can he make?"

"A small one; Just enough to live on. The son would be better in that
respect, but then I should n't like it; and, besides, he would live as
long as myself,--longer, perhaps,--and you know one likes to have a look
forward, though it be ever so far away off."

"Very true,--very true," said he, with a mild sigh. "And this Miss
Leslie," added he, after a while; "she 'll marry, I suppose?"

"Oh yes; her fortune will still be considerable,--at least, I hope so.
That man Trover has taken all the papers away with him, but he 'll turn
up some day or other. At all events, there will be quite