u think? I happened, just as I was writing the last sentence,
to look out of my window, and whom should I see but Lurida, with a young
man in tow, listening very eagerly to her conversation, according to all
appearance! I think he must be a friend of the rector, as I have seen a
young man like this one in his company. Who knows?

Affectionately yours, etc.

DR. BUTTS TO MRS. BUTTS.

MY BELOVED WIFE,--This letter will tell you more news than you would
have thought could have been got together in this little village during
the short time you have been staying away from it.

Lurida Vincent is engaged! He is a clergyman with a mathematical
turn. The story is that he put a difficult problem into one of the
mathematical journals, and that Lurida presented such a neat solution
that the young man fell in love with her on the strength of it. I don't
think the story is literally true, nor do I believe that other report
that he offered himself to her in the form of an equation chalked on the
blackboard; but that it was an intellectual rather than a sentimental
courtship I do not doubt. Lurida has given up the idea of becoming
a professional lecturer,--so she tells me,--thinking that her future
husband's parish will find her work enough to do. A certain amount of
daily domestic drudgery and unexciting intercourse with simple-minded
people will be the best thing in the world for that brain of hers,
always simmering with some new project in its least fervid condition.

All our summer visitors have arrived. Euthymia Mrs. Maurice Kirkwood and
her husband and little Maurice are here in their beautiful house looking
out on the lake. They gave a grand party the other evening. You ought
to have been there, but I suppose you could not very well have left your
sister in the middle of your visit: All the grand folks were there, of
course. Lurida and her young man--Gabriel is what she calls him--were
naturally the objects of special attention. Paolo acted as major-domo,
and looked as if he ought to be a major-general. Nothing could be
pleasanter than the way in which Mr. and Mrs. Kirkwood received their
plain country neighbors; that is, just as they did the others of more
pretensions, as if they were really glad to see them, as I am sure they
were. The old landlord and his wife had two arm-chairs to themselves,
and I saw Miranda with the servants of the household looking in at
the dancers and out at the little groups in the garden, a