which would
please your quaint fancy, which I trust she will accept, if you will
join me in the gift. I shall have an opportunity of sending it in a few
weeks.... Mrs. Eldridge, my dear old housekeeper, has just been in. She
wishes to know whether the new curtains of the little library are to be
crimson or gray. She little knows what confusion she causes me! She
knows not that I am no longer master here! I tell her I will deliberate
on the point, and she retires mystified by my unusual indecision. So
write quickly and make known your desires, if you wish to save me from
an imputation of becoming, as the good old-lady says, 'a little set and
bachelor-like in my ways.' Marmaduke and ---- come down next week to
shoot.... You say, wait till spring, when things will be more propitious
for disclosing our marriage. I have also another scheme which will be
ripened by spring. I shall disclose our marriage, and propose to your
father to make him independent of his ward. No one, certainly, has a
better right to do this than his son-in-law; and then----But I hardly
dare to think of the happiness that will be mine when nothing but death
can part us any more!"

"One evening about this time," continued Madame, "about a week after
Lina had shown me this letter, I came down into the _cabinet de musique_
on my way to the garden to take my usual evening walk on the terrace,
and saw Lina standing by the piano with her bonnet on and her shawl laid
beside her. In her hand she held letters, one of which she had that
moment unsealed. She had, I knew, just returned from the post-office.

"'I have a letter here from Mrs. Baxter, Madame,' she said. 'She writes
to me in great distress; the two children, Minnie and Louisa, whom she
was so anxious to send here, are both ill with scarlet-fever. But here
is your letter; she will no doubt tell you everything herself.'

"I took the letter and seated myself, and was soon absorbed in the poor
mother's hurried and almost incoherent relation, when suddenly I was
startled by a gesture or sound from Lina that made me look up hastily.
She stood with the letter she had been reading crushed in her hand, her
face wearing an expression of agony. For a moment she swayed to and fro
with her hand outstretched to catch a chair for support, but before I
could reach her she had fallen heavily to the floor. I called Justine,
and we raised her to a chair. I stood by her supporting her head on my
breast, while Justine r