"Mrs. Keats's compliments, miss," said the
maid, at this moment, " and hopes the gentleman
will stay to dinner with you, though she
cannot come down herself."

"She imagines you are my cousin, whom she
is aware I have been expecting," said Miss
Herbert, in a whisper, and evidently appearing
uncertain how to act.

"Oh!" said I, with an anguish I could not
repress, "would that I could change my lot
with his."

"Very well, Mary," said Miss Herbert;
"thank your mistress from me, and say the
gentleman accepts her invitation with pleasure.
Is it too much presumption on my part, sir, to
say so?" said she, with a low whisper, while a
half malicious twinkle lit up her eyes, and I
could not speak with happiness.

Determined, however, to give an earnest of
my zeal in. her cause, I declared I would at once
return to the town, and learn when the first
packet sailed for Constantinople. The dinner
hour was seven, so that I had fully five hours
yet to make my inquiries ere we met at table.
I wondered at myself how business-like and
practical I had become; but a strong purpose
now impelled me, and seemed to add a sort of
strength to my whole nature.

"As cousin Harry is the mirror of punctuality,
and you now represent him, Mr. Potts,"
said she, shaking my hand, "pray remember not
to be later than seven."

                CHAPTER XLVI.

"CONSTANTINOPLE, ODESSA, and the
LEVANT.— The Cyclops, five hundred horse-power,
to sail on Wednesday morning, at eight o'clock.
For freight or passage apply to Captain Robert
B. Rogers."

This announcement, which I found amidst a
great many others in a frame over the
fireplace in the colfee-room, struck me forcibly,
first of all, because, not belonging to the
regular mail packets, it suggested a cheap
passage; and, secondly, it promised an early
departure, and the vessel was to sail on the very next
morning, an amount of promptitude that I felt
would gratify Miss Herbert.

Now, although I had been living for a
considerable time back at the cost of the Imperial
House of Hapsburg, my resources for such an
expedition as was opening before me were of
the most slender kind. I made a careful
examination of all my worldly wealth, and it
amounted to the sum of forty-three pounds some
odd shillings. On terra firma I could of course
economise to any extent. With self-denial and
resolution I could live on very little. Life in
the East, I had often heard, was singularly
cheap and inexpensive. All I had read of
Oriental habits in the Arabian Nights and
Tales of the Genii assured me that with a few
dates and a water-melon a man dined fully as
well as need be; and the delicious warmth of
the climate rendered shelter a complete
superfluity. Before forming anything like a correct
budget, I must ascertain what would be the
cost of my passage to Constantinople, and so I
rang for the waiter to direct me to the address
of the advertiser.

"That's the captain yonder, sir," whispered
the waiter, and he pointed to a stout,
weather-beaten man, who, with his hands in the pockets
of his pilot-coat, was standing in front of the
fire, smoking a cigar.

Although I had never seen him before, the
features reminded me of some one I had met
with, and suddenly I bethought me of the
skipper with whom I had sailed from Ireland
for Milford, and who had given me a letter
for his brother " Bob"—the very Robert Rogers
now before me.

"Do you know this handwriting, captain?"
said I, drawing the letter from my pocket-book.

"That's my brother Joe's," said he, not
offering to take the letter from my hand, or
removing the cigar from his mouth, but talking
with all the unconcern in life. " That's Joe's
own scrawl, and there ain't a worse from this to
himself."

"The letter is for you," said I, rather offended
at his coolness.

"So I see. Stick it up there, over the
chimney; Joe has never anything to say that
won't keep."

"It is a letter of introduction, sir," said I,
still more haughtily.

"And what if it be? Won't that keep? Who
is it to introduce?"

"The humble individual before you, Captain
Rogers."

"So, that's it!" said he, slowly. "Well,
read it out for me, for, to tell you the truth,
there's no harder navigation to me than one of
Joe's scrawls."

"I believe I can master it," said I, opening
and reading what originally had been composed
and drawn up by myself. When I came to
"Algernon Sydney Potts, a man so completely
after your own heart," he drew his cigar from
his mouth, and laying his hand on my shoulder,
turned me slowly'around till the light fell full
upon me.

"No, Joseph," said he, deliberately, " not a
bit of it, my boy. This ain't my sort of chap at
all!"

I almost choked with anger, but somehow
there was such an apparent earnestness in the
man, and such a total absence of all wish to
offend, that I read on to the end.

"Well," said he, as I concluded, " he
usedn't to be so wordy as that. I wonder what
came over him. Mayhap he wasn't well."

What a comment on a style that might have
adorned the Correct Letter Writer!

"He was, on the contrary, in the enjoyment
of perfect health, sir," said I, tartly.

"All I can pick out of it is, I ain't to offer
you any money; and as there isn't any direction
easier to follow, nor pleasanter to obey, here's
my hand!" And he wrung mine with a grip
that would have flattened a chain cable.

"What's your line, here? You ain't
sodgering, are you?"