The General had been away about a fortnight, when Lewis received a letter from Rose informing him for the first time of her literary pursuits. Since we have last heard of this young lady she had been growing decidedly blue. Not only had she, under Bracy’s auspices, published a series of papers in Blunt’s Magazine, but she had positively written a child’s book, which, although it contained original ideas, good sense, and warm feeling, instead of second-hand moral platitudes, and did not take that particularly natural view of life which represents it as a system of temporal rewards and punishments, wherein the praiseworthy elder sister is always recompensed with an evangelical young duke, and the naughty boys are invariably drowned on clandestine skating expeditions, yet found an enterprising publisher willing to purchase it; nay, so well did it answer, that the courageous bibliopolist had actually expressed a wish to confer with the “talented authoress,” as he styled poor Rose, in regard to a second work. Whereupon Frere despatched a note to that young lady, telling her she had better come up to town at once, offering her the use of his house in a rough and ready way, just as if he had been writing to a man; and though he did add in a postscript that if she fancied she should be dull, she’d better bring her mother with her, the afterthought was quite as likely to have arisen from sheer good-nature, as from any, even the most faint, glimmering of etiquette. Owing, to a judicious hint thrown out by Bracy, however, an invitation arrived, at the same time, from Lady Lombard, which Mrs. Arundel had immediately decided on accepting, and the object of Rose’s letter was to inquire whether there was the slightest hope of Lewis being able to meet them. By the same post arrived a note written by Annie from her father’s dictation, saying that he found he was quite unable to get on without Mr. Arundel’s assistance; that he considered change of scene might prove beneficial to Walter, and that it was therefore his wish that Lewis and his pupil should join them immediately after the bustle of the wedding should be over; which scheme chimed in with the young tutor’s wishes most admirably, and for the rest of the morning he was so happy as to be quite unlike his usual grave and haughty self, and astonished Faust to such a degree by placing his fore-paws against his own chest, and in that position constraining him to waltz round the room on his hind-legs, that the worthy dog would have assuredly taken out a statute of lunacy against his master had he been aware of the existence of such a process.