into my hand clandestinely. There was no getting out of it, and I had to
deliver it to Charles as soon as I arrived in town. His eyes sparkled
when he saw her writing.

"Look here, what Edith says about you!" said he, somewhat bitterly. He
read as follows:

"DEAREST CHARLES,--Your own true Edith writes to you in the flesh by our
common but well-meaning enemy, Dr. Bleedem."

"There!" he said, "that's what she thinks of you."

"Enemy!" I cried, in astonishment.

"Yes, enemy; but well-meaning, you see, she says," he continued, in a
softened tone.

He then continued to read:

"The poor man thinks, no doubt, that he has achieved a great thing in
bringing us privileged seers into the world of spirits back into this
mundane sphere, fit only for beings of his order. Of course, what else
could be expected of him? The nature of his profession, the grossness of
his being, compel him to think and act in the way of grovelling mortals;
but let us not be too hard upon him; he is a good man, and means well."

"There!" he observed, "you see, she is charitably disposed towards you.
I don't know that I feel disposed to be so lenient."

At this odd beginning of a love-letter, and still odder allusion to
myself, I fairly burst out laughing.

"Oh! laugh away," he said; "it is a fine triumph to rob two beings of
the very essence of their happiness."

I had not done laughing, and he was nearly catching the infection. He
observed in the words of his favourite poet, that, my lungs did crow
like chanticleer, and I did laugh _sans_ intermission.

He took up the letter again, and read a great portion to himself, or
half aloud. I caught the following passage:

"Do you remember, Charles, when, in the early days of our courtship, you
used nightly to serenade me under my window in the enchanted castle, and
how long it was before you knew that I, like yourself, had an earthly
body that had an existence of its own? And when I told you that my
parents--or rather, my adopted parents--were not in the land of spirits,
but that they inhabited the same world in which, in the daytime, we
ourselves were forced to vegetate; and when you thereupon asked me with
whom I shared the castle, do you remember the horror, the rage, and
indignation you felt when you heard that I was held captive within that
enchanted castle by a horrible wizard, who tortured me and tried all his
base arts to make me yield to his love? Oh! Charles, I often look back
to tha