"You might employ many a more able messenger, sir," said Nicholas, "but a more trustworthy or zealous one, I may be bold to say, you could not find."
"Of that I am well assured," returned brother Charles, "well assured. You will give me credit for thinking so, when I tell you, that the object of this mission is a young lady."
"A young lady, sir!" cried Nicholas, quite trembling for the moment with his eagerness to hear more.
"A very beautiful young lady," said Mr. Cheeryble, gravely.
"Pray go on, sir," returned Nicholas.
"I am thinking how to do so," said brother Charles—sadly, as it seemed to his young friend, and with an expression allied to pain. "You accidentally saw a young lady in this room one morning, my dear sir, in a fainting fit. Do you remember? Perhaps you have forgotten "
"Oh no," replied Nicholas, hurriedly. "I—I—remember it very well indeed."
"She is the lady I speak of," said brother Charles. Like the famous parrot, Nicholas thought a great deal but was unable to utter a word.
"She is the daughter," said Mr. Cheeryble, "of a lady who, when she was a beautiful girl herself, and I was very many years younger, I—it seems a strange word for me to utter now—I loved very dearly. You will smile, perhaps, to hear a grey-headed man talk about such things: you will not offend me, for when I was as young as you, I dare say I should have done the same."
"I have no such inclination, indeed," said Nicholas.
"My dear brother Ned," continued Mr. Cheeryble, "was to have married her sister, but she died. She is dead too now, and has been for many years. She married—her choice; and I wish I could add that her after-life was as happy, as God knows I ever prayed it might be!"
A short silence intervened, which Nicholas made no effort to break.
"If trial and calamity had fallen as lightly on his head, as in the deepest truth of my own heart I ever hoped (for her sake) it would, his life would have been one of peace and happiness," said the old gentleman, calmly. "It will be enough to say that this was not the case—that she was not happy—that they fell into complicated distresses and difficulties—that she came, twelve months before her death, to appeal to my old friendship; sadly changed, sadly altered, broken-spirited from suffering and ill usage, and almost broken-hearted. He readily availed himself of the money which, to give her but one hour's peace of mind, I would have poured out as freely as water—nay, he often sent her back for more—and yet even while he squandered it, he made the very success of these, her applications to me, the ground-work of cruel taunts and jeers, protesting that he knew she thought with bitter remorse of the choice she had made, that she had married him from motives of interest and vanity (he was a gay young man with great friends about him when she chose him for her husband),
