Tell me more about those poor prisoners, in whom you take so strong an interest--your spiritual as well as medical hospital. And give me a clearer notion of your doings in the town, your practice and schemes, your gratis patients, dispensaries, and so on. Also, Augustus said you were employed in drawing up reports and statistics about reformatories, and on the general question now so much discussed,--What is to be done with our criminal classes? How busy you must be! Cannot I help you? Send me your MSS. to copy. Give me some work to do. Max, do you remember our talk by the pond-side, when the sun was setting, and the hills looked so still, and soft, and blue? I was there the other day and thought it all over. Yes, I could have been happy, even in the solitary life we both then looked forward to, but it is better to belong to you as I do now. God bless you and keep you safe! Yours, Theodora. P.S. I leave a blank page to fill up after Penelope and I come home. We are going into town together early to-morrow, to enquire about the character of the lady's maid that is to be taken abroad, but we shall be back long before post-time. However, I have written all this overnight to make sure. _Sunday._ P.S. You will have missed your Sunday letter to-day, which vexes me sore. But it is the first time you have ever looked for a letter and "wanted" it, and I trust it will be the last. Ah! now I understand a little of what Penelope must have felt, looking day after day for Francis's letters, which never came; how every morning before post-time she would go about the house as blithe as a lark, and afterwards turn cross and disagreeable, and her face would settle into the sharp, hard-set expression, which made her look so old even then. Poor Penelope! if she could have trusted him the while, it might have been otherwise--men's ways and lives are so different from women's--but it is this love without perfect trust which has been the sting of Penelope's existence. I try to remember this when she makes me feel angry with her, as she did on Saturday. It was through her fault you missed your Sunday letter. You know I always post them myself, in the town; our village post-office would soon set all the neighbours chattering about you and me. And besides, it is pleasant to walk through the quiet lanes we both know well with Max's letter in my hand, and think that it will be in his hand to-morrow. For this I generally choose the 'time when papa rests before dinner, with one or other of us reading to him, and Penelope has hitherto, without saying anything, always taken my place and set me free on a Saturday. A kindness I felt more than I expressed, many a time. But to-day she was unkind; shut herself up in her room the instant we returned from town; then papa called me and detained me till after post-time.