they had been brought up under D’Egville in the corps de ballet. The old boy kept a man-cook, and gave iced champagne.  Now, you know, there is no standing this; and Harriette, the second of the beauties, and I, agreed to fall in love, which in due course of time we effected.  Nothing could be better managed than the whole affair; we each selected a confidant, sat for our pictures, interchanged them with a passionate note, and made a regular engagement for ever.

Such was the state of things, when the route came, and my troop was ordered to embark for Portugal.  Heavens! what a commotion!  Harriette was in hysterics:  we talked of an elopement, and discussed the propriety of going to Gretna; but the hurry to embark prevented us.  I could not, you know, take her with me.  Woman in a transport! a devilish bore; and nothing was left for it but to exchange vows of eternal fidelity.  We did so, and parted—­both persuaded that our hearts were reciprocally broken.

Ah!—­if you knew what I suffered night and day! her picture rested in my bosom; and I consumed a pipe of wine in toasting her health, while I was dying of damp and rheumatism.  But the recollection of my constant Harriette supported me through all; and particularly so, when I was cheered by the report of my snub-nosed surgeon, who joined us six months after at Santarem, and assured me on the faith of a physician, that the dear girl was in the last stage of a consumption.

Two years passed away, and we were ordered home.  O heavens! what were my feelings when I landed at Portsmouth!  I threw myself into a carriage, and started with four horses for Canterbury:  I arrived there with a safe neck, and lost not a moment in announcing my return to my constant Harriette.

The delay of the messenger seemed an eternity:  but what were my feelings, when he brought me a perfumed note (to do her justice, she always wrote on lovely letter-paper), and a parcel.  The one contained congratulations of my safe arrival, accompanied by assurances of unfeigned regret that I had not reached Canterbury a day sooner, and thus allowed her an opportunity of having her “dear friend Captain Melcomb” present at her wedding; while the packet was a large assortment of French kid skins and white ribbon.

That blessed morning she had bestowed her fair hand on a fat professor of theology from Brazen Nose, who had been just presented to a rich prebend by the bishop, for having proved beyond a controversy, the divine origin of tithes, in a blue-bound pamphlet.  Before I had time to recover from my astonishment, a travelling carriage brought me to the window; and quickly as it passed, I had full time to see ma belle Harriette seated beside the thick-winded dignitary.  She bowed her white Spanish hat and six ostrich feathers to me as she rolled off, to spend, as the papers informed me, “the honey-moon at the lakes of Cumberland.’  There was a blessed return for two years’ exposure to the attacks of rheumatism and French cavalry.—­Stories of Waterloo.