"Ah, I know the writing even at this distance of time; this letter is directed to you!"
"It is,—so are all these," said Brandon, with the same voice of preternatural and strained composure. "They have come back to me after an absence of nearly twenty-five years; they are the letters she wrote to me in the days of our courtship—(here Brandon laughed scornfully)—she carried them away with her, you know when; and (a pretty clod of consistency is woman!) she kept them, it seems, to her dying day!"
The subject in discussion, whatever it might be, appeared a sore one to Mauleverer; he turned uneasily on his chair, and said at length—
"Well, poor creature! these are painful remembrances, since it turned out so unhappily; but it was not our fault, dear Brandon; we were men of the world,—we knew the value of—of—women, and treated them accordingly!"
"Right! right! right!" cried Brandon vehemently, laughing in a wild and loud disdain; the intense force of which it would be in vain to attempt expressing.
