"What can she have been up to?
Go on, old fellow," I added aloud; "let's hear all about it." He stood at the end of the room, looking rather sheepish.

"Why, the fact is, old fellow, that I begin to suspect that I have outlived any little attachment I had in that quarter.

I've been staying in the house two months with her, you see; and, in fact!--in fact!"-- here he brought up short again.
"James Stockbridge," I said, sitting up in bed, "you atrocious humbug; two months ago you informed me, with a sigh like a groggy pair of bellows, that her image could only be effaced from your heart by death.
You have seduced me, whose only fault was loving you too well to part with you, into coming sixteen thousand miles to a barbarous land, far from kindred and country, on the plea that your blighted affections made England less endurable than--France, I'll say for argument;--and, now having had two months' opportunity of studying the character of the beloved one, you coolly inform me that the whole thing was a mistake.

I repeat that you are a humbug." "If you don't hold your tongue, and that quick," he replied, "I'll send this boot at your ugly head.

Now, then!" I ducked, fully expecting it was coming, and laughed silently under the bed-clothes.