Oh! could we not begin such a life to-morrow?
If it is absolutely necessary that this trifle of money should be got rid of first, throw it into the river, and think you have lost it amongst gamblers and horse-jockeys." Clara's eyes, which she fondly fixed on her brother's face, glowed through the tears which her enthusiasm called into them, while she thus addressed him.

Mowbray, on his part, kept his looks fixed on the ground, with a flush on his cheek, that expressed at once false pride and real shame.
At length he looked up:--"My dear girl," he said, "how foolishly you talk, and how foolishly I, that have twenty things to do, stand here listening to you! All will go smooth on _my_ plan--if it should not, we have yours in reserve, and I swear to you I will adopt it.

The trifle which this letter of yours enables me to command, may have luck in it, and we must not throw up the cards while we have a chance of the game .-- Were I to cut from this moment, these few hundreds would make us little better or little worse--so you see we have two strings to our bow.

Luck is sometimes against me, that is true--but upon true principle, and playing on the square, I can manage the best of them, or my name is not Mowbray.

Adieu, my dearest Clara." So saying, he kissed her cheek with a more than usual degree of affection.
Ere he could raise himself from his stooping posture, she threw her arm kindly over his neck, and said with a tone of the deepest interest, "My dearest brother, your slightest wish has been, and ever shall be, a law to me--Oh! if you would but grant me one request in return!" "What is it, you silly girl ?" said Mowbray, gently disengaging himself from her hold.--"What is it you can have to ask that needs such a solemn preface ?--Remember, I hate prefaces; and when I happen to open a book, always skip them." "Without preface, then, my dearest brother, will you, for my sake, avoid those quarrels in which the people yonder are eternally engaged?
I never go down there but I hear of some new brawl; and I never lay my head down to sleep, but I dream that you are the victim of it.