y mother get on well together. You
say too little of each other in your letters to me, and I am sometimes
troubled by misgivings. There is another odd circumstance, connected
with our correspondence, which sets me wondering. I always send messages
to Miss Minerva; and Miss Minerva never sends any messages back to me.
Do you forget? or am I an object of perfect indifference to your friend?

"My latest news of you all is from Zo. She has sent me a letter, in
one of the envelopes that I directed for her when I went away. Miss
Minerva's hair would stand on end if she could see the blots and the
spelling. Zo's account of the family circle (turned into intelligible
English), will I think personally interest you. Here it is, in its own
Roman brevity--with your pretty name shortened to two syllables: 'Except
Pa and Car, we are a bad lot at home.' After that, I can add nothing
that is worth reading.

"Take the kisses, my angel, that I leave for you on the blank morsel
of paper below, and love me as I love you. There is a world of meaning,
Carmina, even in those commonplace words. Oh, if I could only go to you
by the mail steamer, in the place of my letter!"

CHAPTER XXVI.

The answers to Ovid's questions were not to be found in Carmina's reply.
She had reasons for not mentioning the conversazione; and she shrank
from writing to him of his mother. Her true position in Mrs. Gallilee's
house--growing, day by day, harder and harder to endure; threatening,
more and more plainly, complications and perils to come--was revealed in
her next letter to her old friend in Italy. She wrote to Teresa in these
words:

"If you love me, forget the inhuman manner in which I have spoken of
Miss Minerva!

"After I had written to you, I would have recalled my letter, if it
could have been done. I began, that evening, to feel ashamed of what I
had said in my anger. As the hours went on, and bedtime approached, I
became so wretched that I ran the risk of another harsh reception, by
intruding on her once more. It was a circumstance in my favour that she
was, to all appearance, in bad spirits too. There was something in her
voice, when she asked what I wanted, which made me think--though
she looks like the last person in the world to be guilty of such
weakness--that she had been crying.

"I gave the best expression I could to my feelings of repentance and
regret. What I actually said to her, has slipped out of my memory; I
was frightened