In the spring it was arranged that the Marchesa Fagniani should bring Mie Mie to Paris to be left a few weeks in a convent before Selwyn should claim her. The meeting did not take place without a last trial of patience for him. He arrived in Paris in April, expecting to find the little traveller, but he was informed that the departure from Milan had been delayed for a few days; this was followed by the news of a change of plans, and that Selwyn must go to Lyons to meet the child, who would be conducted there by her mother--a meeting Selwyn had wished to avert. Eventually, early in May, we read the congratulations of his friends on the restoration of what had become dearest to him in the world. During the month Selwyn spent in Paris, however, waiting for Mie Mie, who was passing the specified time in the convent, fresh difficulties were raised, and he began to doubt if he should ever bring the little girl to England. His health was seriously affected by the strain, and his friends begged him to give up a pursuit which was injuring it and taking him from them; but Mie Mie was at last received from the convent under a vague condition that at some future time she should return to it; a half promise which neither side expected would be fulfilled. The Rev. Dr. Warner gives us a slight description of Mie Mie. A year had passed; she is nine years old; he is writing to Selwyn:-- "That freshness of complexion I should have great pleasure in beholding. It must add to her charms, and cannot diminish the character, sense, and shrewdness which distinguish her physiognomy, and which she possesses in a great degree, with a happy engrafting of a high-bred foreign air upon an English stock . . . "But how very pleasant to me was your honest and naive confession of the joy your heart felt at hearing her admired! It is, indeed, most extraordinary that a certain person who has great taste--would he had as much nature!--should not see her with very different eyes from what he does. I can never forget that naive expression of Mme. de Sevigne, 'Je ne sais comment Von fait de ne pas aimer sa fille?'" * The Duke of Queens berry. But Selwyn was never quite free from the fear that she should be taken from him. In January, 1781, he writes to Lord Carlisle:-- "From Milan things are well; at least, no menaces from thence of any sort, and I am assured, by one who is the most intimate friend of the Emperor's minister there, that he was much more likely to approve than to disapprove of Mie Mie's being with me, knowing as he does the turn and character of the mother." The relationship from this time was more settled, and as Mie Mie grew into womanhood she became to Selwyn a delightful and affectionate companion.