written out in his beautiful copper-plate hand--adapted to the conduct of
a gentleman toward a friend in pecuniary embarrassment. What is more, he
was sure to adhere to it. Mr. Vernor, I believe, got on his feet, paid
his debt, and vowed my father an eternal gratitude. His little daughter
was the apple of his eye, and he pledged himself to bring her up to be
the wife of his benefactor's son. So our fate was fixed, parentally, and
we have been educated for each other. I have not seen my betrothed since
she was a very plain-faced little girl in a sticky pinafore, hugging a
one-armed doll--of the male sex, I believe--as big as herself. Mr.
Vernor is in what is called the Eastern trade, and has been living these
many years at Smyrna. Isabel has grown up there in a white-walled
garden, in an orange grove, between her father and her governess. She is
a good deal my junior; six months ago she was seventeen; when she is
eighteen we are to marry."

He related all this calmly enough, without the accent of complaint, drily
rather and doggedly, as if he were weary of thinking of it. "It's a
romance, indeed, for these dull days," I said, "and I heartily
congratulate you. It's not every young man who finds, on reaching the
marrying age, a wife kept in a box of rose-leaves for him. A thousand to
one Miss Vernor is charming; I wonder you don't post off to Smyrna."

"You are joking," he answered, with a wounded air, "and I am terribly
serious. Let me tell you the rest. I never suspected this superior
conspiracy till something less than a year ago. My father, wishing to
provide against his death, informed me of it very solemnly. I was
neither elated nor depressed; I received it, as I remember, with a sort
of emotion which varied only in degree from that with which I could have
hailed the announcement that he had ordered me a set of new shirts. I
supposed that was the way that all marriages were made; I had heard of