saying you have done so.  Tell her in the sweetest way you can, that you cannot live without seeing her, and getting your conge [39], if conge it is to be, from her own dear lips; and tell him, in as few words, as you please, that you mean to do yourself the honour of knocking at his door on such and such a day—­and do it.

        [FOOTNOTE 39:  conge—­(French) dismissal, notice to quit]

By the bye, Kilcullen certainly returns to Ireland immediately.  There’s been the devil’s own smash among him and the Jews.  He has certainly been dividing money among them; but not near enough, by all accounts, to satisfy the half of them.  For the sake of your reputation, if not of your pocket, don’t let him walk off with the hundred and thirty thousand pounds.  They say it’s not a penny less.

   Very faithfully yours,

   W. BLAKE.

   Shall I do anything for you here about Brien?  I think I might still
   get you eleven to one, but let me hear at once.

As Frank read the first portion of this epistle, his affection for his poor dear favourite nag returned in full force, and he felt all the pangs of remorse for having parted with him; but when he came to the latter part, to Lord Kilcullen’s name, and the initials by which his own Fanny was designated, he forgot all about horse and owner; became totally regardless of thirteen, eleven, and six to one, and read on hastily to the end; read it all again—­then closed the letter, and put it in his pocket, and remained for a considerable time in silent contemplation, trying to make up his mind what he would do.

Nobody was with him as he opened his post-bag, which he took from the messenger as the boy was coming up to the house; he therefore read his letter alone, on the lawn, and he continued pacing up and down before the house with a most perturbed air, for half an hour.

Kilcullen going to marry Fanny Wyndham!  So, that was the cause of Lord Cashel’s singular behaviour—­his incivility, and refusal to allow Frank to see his ward.  “What! to have arranged it all in twenty-four hours,” thought Frank to himself; “to have made over his ward’s money to his son, before her brother, from whom she inherited it, was in his grave:  to determine at once to reject an accepted suitor for the sake of closing on the poor girl’s money—­and without the slightest regard for her happiness, without a thought for her welfare!  And then, such lies,” said the viscount, aloud, striking his heel into the grass in his angry impetuosity; “such base, cruel lies!—­to say that she had authorised him, when he couldn’t have dared to make such a proposal to her, and her brother but two days dead.  Well; I took him for a stiff-necked pompous fool, but I never thought him such an avaricious knave.”  And Fanny, too—­could Fanny have agreed, so soon, to give her hand to another?  She could not have transferred her heart.  His own dear,