epreciation of you. That is to her credit.
She also admits that I must yield freely if at all, and she grants me the
use of similes; but her tactics are to contest them one by one, and the
admirable pretender is not as shifty as the mariner's breeze, he is not
like the wandering spark in burnt paper, of which you cannot say whether
it is chasing or chased: it is I who am the shifty Pole to the steadiest
of magnets. She is a princess in other things besides her superiority to
Physics. There will be wild scenes at Baden.

'My Diary of to-day is all bestowed on you. What have I to write in it
except the pair of commas under the last line of yesterday--"He has not
come!" Oh! to be caring for a he.

'O that I were with your sister now, on one side of her idol, to correct
her extravagant idolatry! I long for her. I had a number of nice little
phrases to pet her with.

'You have said (I have it written) that men who are liked by men are the
best friends for women. In which case, the earl should be worthy of our
friendship; he is liked. Captain Abrane and Sir Meeson, in spite of the
hard service he imposes on them with such comical haughtiness, incline to
speak well of him, and Methuen Rivers--here for two days on his way to
his embassy at Vienna--assured us he is the rarest of gentlemen on the
point of honour of his word. They have stories of him, to confirm Livia's
eulogies, showing him punctilious to chivalry: No man alive is like him
in that, they say. He grieves me. All that you have to fear is my pity
for one so sensitive. So speed, sir! It is not good for us to be much
alone, and I am alone when you are absent.

'I hear military music!

'How grand that music makes the dullest world appear in a minute. There
is a magic in it to bring you to me from the most dreadful of
distances.--Chillon! it would kill me!--Writing here and you perhaps
behind the hill, I can hardly bear it;--I am torn away, my hand will not
any more. This music burst out to mock me! Adieu.

'I am yours.

'Your HENRIETTA.

'A kiss to the sister. It is owing to her.'

Carinthia kissed the letter on that last line. It seemed to her to end in
a celestial shower.

She was oppressed by wonder of the writer who could run like the rill of
the mountains in written speech; and her recollection of the contents
perpetually hurried to the close, which was more in her way of writing,
for there the brief sentences had a throb b