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what pleases be wholly withdrawn, and the sound of what consoles be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 recognised 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
daresay you have been ju