thundering rap at the door startled my meditations. I knew there was
but one pair of knuckles in the house capable of beating such a tattoo,
and I recoiled from admitting such a boisterous guest.

"Gabriella, Gabriella!" rung a voice through the passage. "Are you
asleep? Are you dead? Open the door, pray, or I shall kill myself
squeezing in through the key-hole."

With a deep sigh of vexation, I opened the door, and she sprang in with
the momentum of a ball hurled by a bat.

"My dear creature!" she exclaimed, catching me round the waist and
turning me to the light, "what _have_ you been doing? where _have_ you
been staying? Ill!--tired!--it is all a sham. He need not try to impose
on me such a story as that. I never saw you look so brilliantly well.
Your cheeks and lips are red like the damask rose, and your eyes,--I
never saw such eyes before. Come here and look in the glass. Ill!--ha,
ha!"

"I have been ill," I answered, shrinking from her reckless hand, "and I
was very tired; I feel better now."

"Yes, I should think you did. You rested long enough by the way, Heaven
knows; we saw you climbing the hill at sunset, and the lamps were
lighted before you came in. I was going after you, but Mrs. Linwood
would not let me. Ah! you have animated the statue, thou modern
Pygmaliona. You have turned back into flesh this enchanted man of stone.
Tell it in Gath, publish it in Askelon; but the daughters of fashion
will mourn, the tribes of the neglected will envy."

"I cannot match you in brilliant speeches, Miss Melville."

"Call me Miss Melville again, if you dare. Call me Madge, or Meg; but as
sure as you mount the stilts of ceremony, I will whisk you off at the
risk of breaking your neck. Hark! there is the supper bell. Come, just
as you are. You never looked so charming. That wild flow of the hair is
perfectly bewitching. I don't wonder Mr. Invincible has grounded his
weapons, not I. If I were a young man,--ha, ha!"

"I sometimes fear you are," I cried. At this remark she burst into such
a wild fit of laughter, I thought she never would cease. It drowned the
ringing of the bell, and still kept gushing over afresh.

"Ask Mrs. Linwood to excuse me from supper," said I; "I do not wish any,
indeed I do not."

Well, I am not one of the air plants; I must have something more
substantial than sentiment, or I should pine with green and yellow
hunger, not melancholy. I never cried but once, that I recollect, and
that was w