Miss Daw is going to try a side-saddle on Margot
some morning. The animal is a trifle too light for my weight. By the
bye, I nearly forgot to say that Miss Daw sat for a picture yesterday
to a Rivermouth artist. If the negative turns out well, I am to have a
copy. So our ends will be accomplished without crime. I wish, though,
I could send you the ivorytype in the drawing-room; it is cleverly
colored, and would give you an idea of her hair and eyes, which of
course the other will not.

No, Jack, the spray of mignonette did not come from me. A man of
twenty-eight doesn't enclose flowers in his letters--to another man. But
don't attach too much significance to the circumstance. She gives sprays
of mignonette to the rector, sprays to the lieutenant. She has even
given a rose from her bosom to your slave. It is her jocund nature to
scatter flowers, like Spring.

If my letters sometimes read disjointedly, you must understand that I
never finish one at a sitting, but write at intervals, when the mood is
on me.

The mood is not on me now.

IX.

EDWARD DELANEY TO JOHN FLEMMING.

August 23, 1872.

I have just returned from the strangest interview with Marjorie. She has
all but confessed to me her interest in you. But with what modesty and
dignity! Her words elude my pen as I attempt to put them on paper;
and, indeed, it was not so much what she said as her manner; and that I
cannot reproduce. Perhaps it was of a piece with the strangeness of this
whole business, that she should tacitly acknowledge to a third party the
love she feels for a man she has never beheld! But I have lost, through
your aid, the faculty of being surprised. I accept things as people
do in dreams. Now that I am again in my room, it all appears like an
illusion--the black masses of Rembrandtish shadow under the trees, the
fireflies whirling in Pyrrhic dances among the shrubbery, the sea over
there, Marjorie sitting on the hammock!

It is past midnight, and I am too sleepy to write more.

Thursday Morning.

My father has suddenly taken it into his head to spend a few days at
the Shoals. In the meanwhile you will not hear from me. I see Marjorie
walking in the garden with the colonel. I wish I could speak to her
alone, but shall probably not have an opportunity before we leave.

X.

EDWARD DELANEY TO JOHN FLEMMING.

August 28, 1872.

You were passing into your second childhood, were you? Your intellect
was so reduced that my ep