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242 bors have ever found to that mystery which—saevo cum joco—has for ages paired and shackled the unmatched of body and of spirit. Mrs. Christy herself wondered about it openly, redundantly, and with self-reproach; but her husband either saw no disparity, or was loyal to some youthful belief, some illusion of Rachel in the days before he woke to find that it was Leah.

Only once had he allowed himself a retort. As an exalted "U. E. Loyalist," the invalid passed all her reading hours among courts and coronets. Declaiming a paragraph about the Marquis of Lorne, she drew from the captain a cheerful admission:—

"Never heard of him."

"Never heard—!" she sniffed contemptuously. "Next you 'll say you 've never heard of the Queen!"

"Oh, yes," said the captain, "yes, I have. By all accounts, she must be a real nice old lady."

"You!—you!" cried the reader, choking. "You dare to speak of Her Majesty so! You—oh! You miserable—Yankee!" A wild