I instantly summoned help. The women-servants carried her to my bed. While they were restoring her to herself, I wrote a few lines telling the miserable woman how I had discovered her secret. "Your husband's tranquillity," I added, "is as precious to me as my own. As for your son, you know what he thinks of the mother who deserted him. Your secret is safe in my keeping--safe from your husband, safe from your son, to the end of my life." I sealed up those words, and gave them to her when she had come to herself again. I never heard from her in reply. I have never seen her from that time to this. She knows she can trust me. And what did my good uncle say, when we next met? I would rather report what he did, when he had got the better of his first feelings of anger and surprise on hearing of my contemplated marriage. He consented to receive us on our wedding-day; and he gave my husband the appointment which places us both in an independent position for life. But he had his misgivings. He checked me when I tried to thank him. "Come back in a year's time," he said. "I will wait to be thanked till the experience of your married life tells me that I have deserved it." The year passed; and the General received the honest expression of my gratitude. He smiled and kissed me; but there was something in his face which suggested that he was not quite satisfied yet. "Do you believe that I have spoken sincerely?" I asked. "I firmly believe it," he answered--and there he stopped. A wiser woman would have taken the hint and dropped the subject. My folly persisted in putting another question: "Tell me, uncle. Haven't I proved that I was right when I married my groom?" "No, my dear. You have only proved that you are a lucky woman!" MR. LEPEL AND THE HOUSEKEEPER FIRST EPOCH. THE Italians are born actors. At this conclusion I arrived, sitting in a Roman theater--now many years since. My friend and traveling companion, Rothsay, cordially agreed with me. Experience had given us some claim to form an opinion. We had visited, at that time, nearly every city in Italy. Where-ever a theater was open, we had attended the performances of the companies which travel from place to place; and we had never seen bad acting from first to last. Men and women, whose names are absolutely unknown in England, played (in modern comedy and drama for the most part) with a general level of dramatic ability which I have never seen equaled in the theaters of other nations. Incapable Italian actors there must be, no doubt. For my own part I have only discovered them, by ones and twos, in England; appearing among the persons engaged to support Salvini and Ristori before the audiences of London.