r of him again?"

"I received two letters," answered Henry, "from that remote quarter of
the world. After which I heard, but through no authentic source, that he
died of the cholera. So far as fortune was concerned, I was left as you
see, entirely dependent on myself. Still, I enjoyed the favour of my
ambassador--was not unpopular at my court--could reckon on some powerful
friends;--but all this has disappeared."

"All this, alas!" said Clara, "you have sacrificed for me. And I also am
a fugitive from home."

"Then love must supply all. And so it has, and so it will. Has not our
honeymoon, as they vulgarly call it, lasted nearly a year?"

"It shall last for ever!" said Clara. Then after a pause, which was
filled up as lovers' pauses usually are, she added. "But the worst blow
of all was the loss of your own book;--that dear poetry you had written.
If we had but kept a copy of it, we might have passed many hours of
these winter evenings in reading it. But then," she added, with a smile
and a sigh at the same time, "we should have wanted a candle."

"We talk--we gossip," said Henry, "which is much better. I hear the
sweet tones of your voice; you sing me a song, or you break suddenly out
into that heavenly laugh of yours. What is there not in that musical,
jubilee laugh? When I hear it, angel mine, I am not only delighted, I
muse, I meditate, I am rapt. How much of character is there in a laugh!
You know no man till you have heard him laugh--till you know when and
how he will laugh. There are occasions--there are humours when a man
with whom we have been long familiar, shall quite startle and repel us,
by breaking out into a laugh which comes manifestly right from his
heart, and which yet we had never heard before. Even in fair ladies with
whom I have been much pleased, I have remarked the same thing. As in
many a heart a sweet angel slumbers unseen till some happy moment
awakens it, so there sleeps often in gracious and amiable characters,
deep in the background, a quite vulgar spirit, which starts into life
when something rudely comical penetrates into the less frequented
chambers of the mind. Our instinct teaches us that in that being there
lies something we must take heed of.

"As to that young and thoughtless publisher," continued Henry, "who
became bankrupt and ran off with my glorious manuscript, he, no doubt,
did us good service; for how easily might my intercourse with him, while
the book was being printed,