“Passionate thing! Your face is the colour of a coquelicot. I wonder what always makes you so mighty testy à l’enaroit du gros Jean. ‘John Anderson, my jo, John!’ Oh, the distinguished name!”

Thrilling with exasperation, to which it would have been sheer folly to have given vent—for there was no contending with that unsubstantial feather, that mealy-winged moth—I extinguished my taper, locked my bureau, and left her, since she would not leave me. Small-beer as she was, she had turned insufferably acid.

The morrow was Thursday and a half-holiday. Breakfast was over; I had withdrawn to the first classe. The dreaded hour, the post hour, was nearing, and I sat waiting it, much as a ghost-seer might wait his spectre. Less than ever was a letter probable; still, strive as I would, I could not forget that it was possible. As the moments lessened, a restlessness and fear almost beyond the average assailed me. It was a day of winter east wind, and I had now for some time entered into that dreary fellowship with the winds and their changes, so little known, so incomprehensible to the healthy. The north and east owned a terrific influence, making all pain more poignant, all sorrow sadder. The south could calm, the west sometimes cheer—unless, indeed, they brought on their wings the burden of thunder-clouds, under the weight and warmth of which all energy died.

Bitter and dark as was this January day, I remember leaving the classe, and running down without bonnet to the bottom of the long garden, and then lingering amongst the stripped shrubs, in the forlorn hope that the postman’s ring might occur while I was out of hearing, and I might thus be spared the thrill which some particular nerve or nerves, almost gnawed through with the unremitting tooth of a fixed idea, were becoming wholly unfit to support. I lingered as long as I dared without fear of attracting attention by my absence. I muffled my head in my apron, and stopped my ears in terror of the torturing clang, sure to be followed by such blank silence, such barren vacuum for me. At last I ventured to re-enter the first classe, where, as it was not yet nine o’clock, no pupils had been admitted. The first thing seen was a white object on my black desk, a white flat object. The post had, indeed, arrived, by me unheard. Rosine had visited my cell, and, like some angel, had left behind her a bright token of her presence. That shining thing on the desk was indeed a letter, a real letter. I saw so much at the distance of three yards, and as I had but one correspondent on earth, from that one it must come. He remembered me yet. How deep a pulse of gratitude sent new life through my heart!

Drawing near, bending and looking on the letter, in trembling but almost certain hope of seeing a known hand, it was my lot to find, on the contrary, an autograph for the moment deemed unknown—a pale, female scrawl, instead of a firm, masculine character. I then thought fate was too hard for me, and I said audibly, “This is cruel.”

But I got over that pain also. Life is still life, whatever its pangs. Our eyes and ears and their use remain with us, though the prospect of what pleases be wholly withdrawn, and the sound of what consoles be quite silenced.

I opened the billet. By this time I had recognized its handwriting as perfectly familiar. It was dated “La Terrasse,” and it ran thus:—

“Dear Lucy,—It occurs to me to inquire what you have been doing with yourself for the last month or two. Not that I suspect you would have the least difficulty in giving an account of your proceedings. I dare say you have been just as busy and as happy as ourselves at La Terrasse. As to Graham, his professional connection extends daily. He is so much sought after, so much engaged, that I tell him he will grow quite conceited. Like a right good mother as I am, I do my best to keep him down; no flattery does he get from me, as you know. And yet, Lucy, he is a fine fellow; his mother’s heart dances at the sight of him. After being hurried here and there the whole day, and passing the ordeal of fifty sorts of tempers, and combating a hundred caprices, and sometimes witnessing cruel sufferings—perhaps occasionally, as I tell him, inflicting them—at night he still comes home to me in such kindly, pleasant mood that really