The billet that it now conveyed was, if possible, penned in a more superlative strain than those of the preceding day, and Miss Chutney, after having read it, her ears burning with her blushes the while, scribbled a hasty reply with the pencil that accompanied it—thanking the Count for his tender inquiries, saying she was afraid she was unworthy of the high eulogiums he was kind enough to heap upon her, and informing him that she was undergoing a short term of solitary confinement, and bread and water, for having been imprudent enough to permit him to secrete himself in the music-room during the absence of her schoolmistress. The reply had not been despatched many minutes, when the piscatorial post brought back a second communication from the Count, and this time it bore _substantial_ proofs of the Frenchman’s sympathy for the tender prisoner, for attached to one of the hooks that dangled at the end of the line was a _petit pain_, while hanging to another was a bunch of grapes. The bread and fruit alone would have been sufficient to make a deep and lasting impression on the very impressionable Miss Chutney, even had they been unaccompanied by any verbal expression of commiseration or attachment; but when she found, on breaking the roll in two, a letter secreted in the crumb, vowing everlasting affection, and protesting that he would be her slave for life if she would but fly with him to _La belle France_, her delight knew no bounds. Miss Chutney had only just finished perusing the proposal, when she heard the sound of Miss Wewitz’s foot upon the stairs. Hastily dashing the line out of the window, she ran to her accustomed seat on the edge of the inverted clothes-basket, and, pushing the roll and grapes and letter under her apron, sat there, waiting the coming of her tyrant, as calm, and almost as lifeless, as a vegetarian. Miss Wewitz was lost in astonishment to find Miss Chutney so utterly hardened, as she termed it. However, she had written to her guardian, and the tone of her letter was such, that she felt confidently he would be with them the next day, so Miss Chutney could do as she pleased; from that moment Miss Wewitz washed her hands of her—though she could not help observing that, after the unremitting attention she had paid to her morals, such conduct was a most heart-rending return. With this pathetic sentiment she closed the door, and, having turned the key, descended the stairs with it in her pocket.