mind indeed, or a very obdurate heart, which could have remained
unmoved at Lord Chetwynde's delight when he received his boy's
letters. Their advent was also the Hegira from which every thing in
the family dated. Apart, however, from the halo which surrounded
these letters, they were interesting in themselves. Guy wrote easily
and well. His letters to his father were half familiar, half filial;
a mixture of love and good-fellowship, showing a sort of union, so to
speak, of the son with the younger brother. They were full of humor
also, and made up of descriptions of life in the East, with all its
varied wonders. Besides this, Guy happened to be stationed at the
very place where General Pomeroy had been Resident for so many years;
and he himself had command of one of the hill stations where Zillah
herself had once been sent to pass the summer. These places of which
Guy's letters treated possessed for her a peculiar interest,
surrounded as they were by some of the pleasantest associations of
her life; and thus, from very many causes, it happened that she
gradually came to take an interest in these letters which increased
rather than diminished. In one of these there had once come a note
inclosed to Zillah, condoling with her on her father's death. It was
manly and sympathetic, and not at all stiff. Zillah had received it
when her bitter feelings were in the ascendant, and did not think of
answering it until Hilda urged on her the necessity of doing so. It
is just possible that if Hilda had made use of different arguments
she might have persuaded Zillah to send some sort of an answer, if
only to please the Earl. The arguments, however, which she did use
happened to be singularly ill chosen. The "husband" loomed largely in
them, and there were very many direct allusions to marital authority.
As these were Zillah's sorest points, such references only served to
excite fresh repugnance, and strengthen Zillah's determination not to
write. Hilda, however, persisted in her efforts; and the result was
that finally, at the end of one long and rather stormy discussion,
Zillah passionately threw the letter at her, saying:

"If you are so anxious to have it answered, do it yourself. It is a
world of pities he is not your husband instead of mine, you seem so
wonderfully anxious about him."

"It is unkind of you to say that," replied Hilda, in a meek voice,
"when you know so well that my sympathy and anxiety are all for you,
and you