hought of you and have opened my desk. My spirits
have failed me, and I have shut it up again. Am I now in a happier frame
of mind? Yes, my good old nurse, I am happier. I have had a letter from
Ovid.

"He has arrived safely at Quebec, and he is beginning to feel better
already, after the voyage. You cannot imagine how beautifully, how
tenderly he writes! I am almost reconciled to his absence, when I
read his letter. Will that give you some idea of the happiness and the
consolation that I owe to this best and dearest of men?

"Ah, my old granny, I see you start, and make that favourite mark
with your thumb-nail under the word 'consolation'! I hear you say to
yourself, 'Is she unhappy in her English home? And is Aunt Gallilee to
blame for it?' Yes! it is even so. What I would not for the whole world
write to Ovid, I may confess to you. Aunt Gallilee is indeed a hard,
hard woman.

"Do you remember telling me, in your dear downright way, that Mr. Le
Frank looked like a rogue? I don't know whether he is a rogue--but I do
know that it is through his conduct that my aunt is offended with me.

"It happened three weeks ago.

"She sent for me, and said that my education must be completed, and that
my music in particular must be attended to. I was quite willing to obey
her, and I said so with all needful readiness and respect. She answered
that she had already chosen a music-master for me--and then, to my
astonishment, she mentioned his name. Mr. Le Frank, who taught her
children, was also to teach me! I have plenty of faults, but I really
think vanity is not one of them. It is only due to my excellent master
in Italy to say, that I am a better pianoforte player than Mr. Le Frank.

"I never breathed a word of this, mind, to my aunt. It would have been
ungrateful and useless. She knows and cares nothing about music.

"So we parted good friends, and she wrote the same evening to engage my
master. The next day she got his reply. Mr. Le Frank refused to be my
professor of music--and this, after he had himself proposed to teach me,
in a letter addressed to my aunt! Being asked for his reasons, he made
an excuse. The spare time at his disposal, when he had written, had been
since occupied by another pupil. The true reason for his conduct is,
that he heard me speak of him--rashly enough, I don't deny it--as an
ugly man and a bad player. Miss Minerva sounded him on the subject,
at my request, for the purpose of course of making my