Here comes _La Madre_ with her letter, and so _Adio_. Adelaide would send her love, but we are to _suppose_ that she has none to spare. _By and by_, I dare say, that she will have plenty on hand; but that is _selon les regles_. The only danger is, that what goes _out_ love, may come _back_ hatred. Well, Rochefaucauld says, that "hatred is distempered love," so 'tis all the same thing in the end. I am growing _prosy_, but do you know that the foolish story I told you in my former letter has made such a noise, that I am provoked, and shall begin to turn _blue_ in earnest to vex the blocks. Old Pagoda is at hand, or I assure you it is well if my "Ostracism" were not to send _me_ into banishment. It was rather an unlucky hit, half the young men in town do not understand it, and it is voted a _poser_. Crayton tells me that money is lost and won upon it daily in St. James's Street. When my uncle is fairly come, and I have touched the rupees, and golden maures, I will positively not keep my wits under _hatches_ any longer. After all, it is egregious folly to give opiates to one's brains because our exquisites are unfurnished in the upper story. I must, however, take the matter quietly, for _under_ a hundred thousand, it will not do to use a word of more than two syllables in length, or _any_ dimensions _at all_ in _height_ or _depth_; but you shall see what revenge I will have when, like the princess in the fairy tale, my "thread-papers are made of bank-notes, and my favorite spaniel drinks out of a diamond cup." I will then ransack Johnson's _folio_, and oblige every aspirant to come to my levees with the pocket Lexicon in his bosom. Remember what I have said--mum is the word. Let us not have a commission to try whether we are of sane, or insane mind, nor yet be forced, like Rodolpho, to seek our wits in the moon, for I promise you we should not find a Pegasus to mount so high now-a-days. _Encore, adieu._ Yours, ever, L. H. LETTER XVI. MRS. HOWARD TO ARTHUR HOWARD, ESQ. (_Inclosed in the preceding._) My dear Boy,