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what you want written.

I'll put mine in big letters on my tablets. Bring the imp back with you, and we'll make her spell out both.

Little Polly Applegate was easily found.

She wrote down Silvia's opinion, and then came up with her to the Well Head. Louisa's judgment was ready.

Thus they both ran :

LOUISA." A humbug, rather."

SILVIA." A humbug-and worse.'

Odd that the same word, as applicable to Mr. Walter Nugent, should have occurred to What would they have said if

both girls.

they had known he was in love with both of them or thought he was?

CHAPTER XII.

WHAT HE SAID TO SILVIA.

"I have strange powers of speech."

S he lay in his crib at the old Manor

As

1

House of Mount St. Nicholas, smoking a meerschaum with a long ebony stem, and occasionally dipping into a scrofulous French novel, Walter Nugent had many sordid soliloquies on the comparative value of the two young ladies who were thrown in his path. So great a belief in himself had Nugent, that he quite thought it was a mere question of ask and have with both Louisa and Silvia. To which should he throw his handkerchief? That was the difficulty with this young Caliph, who had

hitherto been successful in everything, and who felt certain of success in love.

He pondered much. He argued the matter with himself most logically. Louisa was an heiress in her own right; but then Silvia would be richer eventually, and her father was a great landowner, and her brother was an easy sort of fool. Silvia was blonde: he preferred brunettes, and Louisa was a perfect example. Really things were too evenly balanced. He would toss up. Heads, Louisa ; tails, Silvia. Silvia won. Nugent turned on his side and fell asleep, with that beautiful promptitude which is commanded by men whose consciences are undisturbed.

When he awoke next morning, it was to immediate recollection of his vesper thoughts. Walter Nugent had the faculty of falling asleep easily; he had also the cognate faculty of awaking in the morning free from any mental or physical ailment. Too much alcohol gave him no headache; too much perplexity gave him no worry.

He thoroughly exemplified that aphorism attributed to Talleyrand, that the two secrets of happiness were a strong stomach and a hard heart. As he opened his eyes at about six o'clock he could see through his bedroom window the Atlantic waves calmly moving beneath the summer sun; without rising he could watch the restless ocean, here and there a sail, here and there a sea-mew stooping to look for fish. He enjoyed the glorious vision in his own way: not the beauty of it delighted him, but the sense of freedom, the suggestion of adventure. It seemed for a moment to put an end to his previous plans. Why should he stay there and make love to little girls when his yacht was ready, and the great highways of the sea were open to him? That tremulous tide was his old friend: hither and thither he had roved upon it till it seemed to him he knew it as a born Cockney knew London streets. His yacht had entered virgin creeks, had coasted untrodden islets. Fearless and resourceful,

Walter Nugent went whither he would, and had many an adventure too wild to be recounted here. As he lay As he lay gazing on the sea, the thirst for his old life came upon him, and he was on the point of going down to his boat without a word even to his uncle, and making sail in search of wild peril, and pleasure wilder.

He lighted his pipe. The sedative calmed him. He thought of the two beautiful girls whom he had just met. He fell into a lazy nicotine dream. It struck him that he might carry away one of them in his yacht if he chose, and take her to the end of the world. He thought of islands in Greek seas that he remembered, where it would be Elysium to live with a woman till you tired of her. What then? Walter Nugent was ready with an answer to the question . . . Leave her to chance, or sell her as a slave.

Having consumed a pipe of honeydew over these philosophic and humane reflections, Mr.

VOL. I.

I I

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