I don't know why, but she went on a visit to Henderson after that evening in the arbor. I suspect the governing power of Georgiana's wisdom to have been put forth here, for within a few days I received from Sylvia a letter which she asked me not to show to Georgiana, and in which she invited me to correspond with her secretly. The letter was of a singularly adhesive quality as to the emotions. Throughout she referred to herself as "the exile," although it was plain that she wrote in the highest spirits; and in concluding she openly charged Georgiana with having given her a black eye--a most unspeakable phrase, surely picked up in the school-room. As a return for the black eye, Sylvia said that she had composed a poem to herself, a copy of which she enclosed. I quote Sylvia's commemorative verses upon her wrongs and her banishment. They show features of metrical excess, and can scarcely claim to reflect the polish of her calmer art; but they are of value to me as proving that whatever the rebuke Georgiana may have given, it had rebounded from that elastic spirit. LINES TO MYSELF Oh! she was a lovely girl, So pretty and so fair, With gentle, love-lit _eyes_, And wavy, dark brown hair. I loved the gentle girl, But, oh! I heaved a sigh When first she told me she could see Out of only _one_ eye. But soon I thought within myself I'd better save my tear and sigh _To bestow upon an older person I know Who has more than one eye_. She is brave and intelligent Too. She is witty and wise. She'll accomplish more now than _another person_ I know Who has _two_ eyes. Ah, you need not pity _her_! _She_ needs not your tear and sigh. She'll make good use, I tell you, Of her _one_ remaining eye. In the home where we are hastening, In our eternal Home on High, See that _you_ be not rivalled By the girl with only _one_ eye.[*] [*]Miss Sylvia could not have been speaking seriously when she wrote that she had "composed" this poem. It is known to be the work of another hand, though Sylvia certainly tampered with the original and produced a version of her own. J. L. A. Having thus dealt a thrust at Georgiana, Sylvia seems to have turned in the spirit of revenge upon her mother; and when she came home some days ago she brought with her a distant cousin of her own age--a boy, enormously fat--whom she soon began to decoy around the garden as her mother had been decoyed by the general. Further to satirize the similarity of lovers, she one day pinned upon his shoulders rosettes of yellow ribbon.