les of my _pension_; but
when people are married,--_c'est une autre chose_! But how is it that I
have never found this out? Ah, because you have charge of all the
letters to and from the post!'

"'Yes, Madame,' she said, looking up with a smile. 'I have sometimes
felt so unhappy, because I seemed to be doing a _dishonest_ thing; but
it would have been so hard to go without them, and I knew how kind and
good you were. If you would like to see one of his letters,' she
continued, half shyly, but with dignified gravity, 'I have one here';
and she drew a large letter from her pocket and handed it to me.

"Here it is," said Madame, taking the first from the bundle in her hand.

The handwriting was firm and regular; the letter was long, but, though
the whole breathed but one feeling of the deepest and tenderest
affection, it was hardly what would be called a "love-letter." There
were criticisms of new works, and further references to books of a kind
that showed the writer to be a man of scholarly tastes. After we had
looked at this one, Madame handed us others from the packet, all marked
by the same characteristics as the first. Here and there were little
pictures of the writer's every-day life. He told of his being out on the
moors at sunrise shooting with his Cousin Marmaduke, or riding round the
estate giving orders about the transplanting of certain trees, "which
are set as you have suggested, and are growing as fast as they can till
you come to walk under their shade," or in the library at evening, when
the place beside him seems so void where she should be. Then there were
other letters, speaking of ---- ----, the poet, who was coming down to
spend a few weeks with him, and write verses under his elms at Aylesford
Grange; but in one and all Lina was the central idea round which all
other interests merely turned, and the source from which all else drew
its charm.

"As soon," said Madame, continuing her narration, "as I had finished
reading the letter, I entreated Lina to go on with her curious history.

"'I met Arthur,' she said, 'first at Mrs. Baxter's, as I said before. He
is the noblest man I have ever known,--so good, so clever, so pure in
heart! His Cousin Marmaduke, who was there at the same time, paid me
great attention, but I never liked him; there was always something
repulsive to me in his black eyes; I never trusted him; and beside
Arthur,--oh, it seemed like the contrast between night and day! I don't
kno