headache as the excuse for her
evasion. Perhaps the same cause--(was it headache?) holds her still
captive in her little chamber, the topmost chamber in the western
pepper-box turret, four of which flank the four corners of the old
Chateau du Resnel. Certain it is, from that same lofty lodging
Madelaine has not stirred the livelong day--scarcely from that same
station;--

"There at her chamber window high,
The lonely maiden sits--
Its casement fronts the western sky,
And balmy air admits.

"And while her thoughts have wandered far
From all she hears and sees,
She gazes on the evening star,
That twinkles through the trees.--

"Is it to watch the setting sun,
She does that seat prefer?
Alas! the maiden thinks of one,
Who _little_ thinks of her."

"Eternal fidelity"--being, of course, the first article agreed and sworn
to in the lovers' parting covenant, "Constant correspondence," as
naturally came second in the list, and never was eagerness like Walter's
to pour out the first sorrows of absence in his first letter to the
beloved, or impatience like his for the appearance of her answer. After
some decorous delay----(a _little_ maiden coyness was thought decorous
in those days)--it arrived, the delightful letter! Delightful it would
have been to Walter, in that second effervescence of his first passion,
had the penmanship of the fair writer been barely legible, and her
epistolary talent not absolutely below the lowest degree of mediocrity.
Walter (to say the truth) had felt certain involuntary misgivings on
that subject. Himself not only an ardent admirer of nature, but an
unaffected lover of elegant literature, he had been frequently mortified
at Adrienne's apparent indifference to the one, and seeming distaste to
the other. Of her style of writing he had found no opportunities of
judging. Albums were not the fashion in those days--and although, on the
few occasions of his absence from St Hilaire after his engagement with
Adrienne (Caen being still his ostensible place of residence), he had
not failed to indite to her sundry billets, and even full-length
letters, dispatched (as on a business of life and death) by bribed and
special messengers,--either Mlle. de St Hilaire was engaged or abroad
when they arrived--or otherwise prevented from replying; and still more
frequently the lover trod on the heels of his despatch. So it chanced
that he had