So I just glanced at the dear handwriting, as if running over an ordinary letter with the eye of indifference, and then put the document into my pocket with the best assumption of carelessness I was capable of.

How I longed for the end of that tedious meal, over which Captain Paget lingered in his usual epicurean fashion! My friend Horatio has shown himself not a little curious about my late absence from the joint domicile.

I again resorted to the Dorking fiction,--my aged aunt breaking fast, and requiring much propitiation from a dutiful nephew with an eye to her testamentary arrangements.

I had been compelled to endow my shadowy relative with a comfortable little bit of money, in order to account for my devotion; since the powerful mind of my Horatio would have refused to grasp the idea of disinterested affection for an ancient kinswoman.
There was an ominous twinkle in the Captain's sharp gray eyes when I gave this account of my absence, and I sorely doubt his acceptance of this second volume of the Dorking romance.

Ah, what a life it is we lead in the tents of Ishmael, the cast-away! through what tortuous pathways wander the nomad tribes who call Hagar, the abandoned, their mother! what lies, what evasions, what prevarications! Horatio Paget and I watch each other like two cunning fencers, with a stereotyped smile upon our lips and an eager restlessness in our eyes, and who shall say that one or other of our rapiers is not poisoned, as in the famous duel before Claudius, usurper of Denmark?
My dear one's letter is all sweetness and love.