Sometimes, to entertain my hosts, I would volunteer to warble my strange symphonies, and was never so ecstatically happy as when I felt the tears of musical rapture roll down my cheeks, when Dennis, by way of applause, always observed lugubriously-- "Ah, 'twas the poor master was proud indeed of her voice. 'She'll be a Catherine Hayes yet, you'll see, Dennis,' he used to say, 'or maybe she'll compose illigant operas.'" Alas! I neither sing nor compose, and listen to the singing and the music of others with unemotional quietude. So many different achievements have been fondly expected of me, that I have preferred the alternative of achieving nothing. Better demolish a multitude of expectations than build one's house of the perishable bricks of a single one! Preparations for my departure around me must have been going on, but I perceived nothing of them. I vaguely remember daily acquaintance with a dame's school in the neighbourhood, whither Mary Ann conducted me every morning. But remembrance confines itself to the first positive delights of a slate and pencil. Next to my own operas and Mary Ann's stories, I could conceive nothing on earth more fascinating than a certain slate, after I had arduously polished it, a slate-pencil, and leisure to draw what I liked on the blue-grey square. There were little boys and girls on the benches before and behind me, but I only see myself absorbed with my new pleasure, making strokes and curves and letters, and effacing them with impassioned gravity. Chapter X. THE GREAT NEWS.