CHAPTER X.

MY LETTERS.

Day was waning into night, when I again unclosed my eyes. A sober calm had succeeded the burning agitation of the previous hours. I was no longer a lover--or at least the lover of Catherine Lee. My thoughts had returned to Moncton Park, and in dreams the fairy figure of Margaret had flitted beside me, through its green arcades. My heart was free to love her who so loved me, and by the light of the lamp I eagerly opened up the letters, which I had grasped during my slumbers tightly in my hand.

But before I could decipher a line, my worthy friend Dan came to the rescue. "I cannot permit that, Master Geoffrey," said he; "your eyes are too weak to read such fine penmanship."

"My good fellow, only a few lines. You must allow me to do that."

"Not a word. What is the use of all this nursing if you will have your own way? You will be dead at this rate in less than a week."

"What a deal of trouble that would save you!" said I, looking at him reproachfully.

"Who called it trouble? not I," said honest Dan. "The trouble is a pleasure, if you will only be tractable and obey those who mean you well. Now don't you see what comes of acting against reason and common sense. You would talk to the mistress the whole blessed afternoon. Several times I came to the door, and it was still talk, talk, talk; and when my young lady comes home and the old mistress was fairly tired, and walked out to give her tongue a rest, it was still the same with the young one--talk, talk, talk, and no end to the talk, till you well nigh fainted; and if it had not been for God's Providence that set you off fast asleep, you might have died of the talk fever."

"But I am better now, Daniel: you see the talking did me no harm, but good."

"Tout! tout! man, a bad excuse, you know, is better than none they say. But I think it's far worse, for 'tis generally an invented lie, just to cheat the Devil or one's own conscience; howsomever, I doubt much whether the Devil was ever cheated by such practices, but did not always win in the long run by that sort of _stale mate_."

"Are you a chess player?" I asked in some surprise.

"Ay, just in a small way. Old Jenkins the butler and I often have a tuzzle together in his pantry, which sometimes ends in a _stale mate_--he! he! he!--Jenkins, who is a dry stick, says that a stale mate is better than stale fish, or a glass of flat champagne--he! he! he!"

"I perfectly agree with Jenkins. But don't you see, my good Daniel, that you blame me for talking with the ladies, and wanting to read a love-letter; while you are making me act quite as imprudently, by laughing and talking with you."

"A love-letter did you say?" and he poked his long nose nearly into my face, and squinted down with a glance of intense curiosity at the open