he had not carried away with him one hoarded treasure of the fair
one's writing. And as to books--he had never detected the "dame de ses
pensees" in the act of reading anything more intellectual than the words
for a new Vaudeville, or a letter from her Paris milliner. He had more
than once proposed to read aloud to her--but either she was seized
with a fit of unconquerable yawning before he proceeded far in his
attempt--or the migraine, or the vapours, to which distressing ailments
she was constitutionally subject--were sure to come on at the
unfortunate moment of his proposition--and thus, from a combination of
untoward accidents, he was not only left in ignorance of his mistress's
higher attainments, but at certain moments of disappointed feeling
reduced to form conjectures on the subject, compared to which "ignorance
was bliss;" and to some lingering doubts of the like nature, as well as
to lover-like impatience, might be attributable the nervous trepidation
with which he broke the seal of her first letter. That letter!--The
first glimpse of its contents was a glimpse of Paradise!--The first
hurried reading transported him to the seventh heaven--and the twentieth
(of course, dispassionately critical) confirmed him in the fruition
of its celestial beatitudes. Seriously speaking, Walter Barnard
must have been a fool, as well as an ingrate, if he had not been
pleased--enraptured with the sweet, modest, womanly feeling that
breathed through every line of that dear letter. It was no long one--no
laboured production--(though perfectly correct as to style and grammar);
but the artless affection that evinced itself in more than one sentence
of those two short pages, would have stamped perfection on the whole, in
Walter's estimation, had it not (as was the case) been throughout
characterised by a beautiful, yet singular simplicity of expression,
which surprised not less than it enchanted him. And then--how he
reproached himself for the mixed emotion!--Why should it surprise him
that Adrienne wrote thus? His was the inconceivable dulness--the want
of discernment--of intuitive penetration into the intellectual depths
of a character, veiled from vulgar eyes by the retiringness of
self-depreciating delicacy, but which to him would gradually have
revealed itself, if he had applied himself sedulously to unravel the
interesting mystery.

Thenceforward, as may well be imagined, the correspondence, so happily
commenced, was establishe