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 use. She doubted, indeed, whether he would know a mere single sovereign by sight, he seemed to deal with them so exclusively by hundreds and thousands.

However, at this moment, it would have been impossible to address him; a letter had been brought to him marked 'Immediate.' He read it with apparent unconcern, but his glasses fell from his hand, as he removed them from his eyes. "Ah, my dear lady," he said, turning to the great lady of the party, who was seated at his right hand. "This is one of the petty torments of age, which you will one day have to endure; I am always losing my spectacles, or dropping my glasses. Do take care of your eyes, mine are quite worn out."

As the friend he addressed was past sixty, and had for some years enjoyed, in the seclusion of home, the comfort of what she called clearers, she was particularly pleased with this little address. The Baroness had seen the letter arrive, and the trivial incident of the falling glasses, perhaps, had a meaning to her, which no one else could attach to it. How