ows with this
grand adornment. I assure you it did not at all misbecome him; he
looked quite Eastern, except that he is so fair. Nobody, however, can
accuse him of having red hair _now_--it is genuine chestnut--a dark,
glossy chestnut; and when I put my large cashmere about him, there was
as fine a young bey, dey, or pacha improvised as you would wish to see.

"It was good entertainment; but only half-enjoyed, since I was alone:
you should have been there.

"In due time my lord awoke: the looking-glass above the fireplace soon
intimated to him his plight: as you may imagine, I now live under
threat and dread of vengeance.

"But to come to the gist of my letter. I know Thursday is a
half-holiday in the Rue Fossette: be ready, then, by five in the
afternoon, at which hour I will send the carriage to take you out to La
Terrasse. Be sure to come: you may meet some old acquaintance. Good-by,
my wise, dear, grave little god-daughter.--Very truly yours,

"LOUISA BRETTON.".

Now, a letter like that sets one to rights! I might still be sad after
reading that letter, but I was more composed; not exactly cheered,
perhaps, but relieved. My friends, at least, were well and happy: no
accident had occurred to Graham; no illness had seized his
mother-calamities that had so long been my dream and thought. Their
feelings for me too were--as they had been. Yet, how strange it was to
look on Mrs. Bretton's seven weeks and contrast them with my seven
weeks! Also, how very wise it is in people placed in an exceptional
position to hold their tongues and not rashly declare how such position
galls them! The world can understand well enough the process of
perishing for want of food: perhaps few persons can enter into or
follow out that of going mad from solitary confinement. They see the
long-buried prisoner disinterred, a maniac or an idiot!--how his senses
left him--how his nerves, first inflamed, underwent nameless agony, and
then sunk to palsy--is a subject too intricate for examination, too
abstract for popular comprehension. Speak of it! you might almost as
well stand up in an European market-place, and propound dark sayings in
that language and mood wherein Nebuchadnezzar, the imperial
hypochondriac, communed with his baffled Chaldeans. And long, long may
the minds to whom such themes are no mystery--by whom their bearings
are sympathetically seized--be few in number, and rare of rencounter.
Long may it be generally thought that phy