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 so soon as I shall have brought it to the point, now near at hand, when Miss Berrith disappears out of my life as surely as she entered it. That point attained, I shall have done all that the most broad-minded of criticized men could do in the line of endeavouring to ascertain the cause of complaint; and I can lay my manuscript aside with the serene conviction that, in common with a vast majority of the remarks made by her sex, those of Miss Berrith on the subject of my pathos and self-esteem had no absolute meaning at all.

Before resuming the main thread of my chronicle, I have only to add that although, from time to time, I have directly addressed the gentle reader of these pages, the apostrophe has been the merest matter of form, and any gentle reader, apart from the present gentle writer, a person purely supposititious. The artifice is designed simply to lend an air of disinterestedness and impersonality to this record, when I shall come to read it over. It