"Gertrude has told me the news about you. I am surprised, and yet I am not. Miss Laurence is beautiful and clever and good. What more can I say in the way of congratulation? Perhaps even this much is more than you will care to receive from me, but we are very old friends, Beauchamp, and I am completely in earnest in saying I hope you will both be very happy. If Miss Laurence remembers me, or if you care to tell her who I am, will you tell her, too, that I shall look forward to knowing her, and to really `making friends,' if she will let me?-- Believe me,-- "Yours affectionately,-- "Roma Alice Eyrecourt." It was a pleasant little letter to receive, pleasant in a special sense to Beauchamp, for it was evident to him that Roma had exerted herself-- her tact and discrimination--to render it so, and the reflection soothed his still sore feeling towards her. He felt, too, that she really meant what she said and expressed, and he was right in thinking so. Roma was very sincere in her good wishes. "So this is the end of it," she had said to herself, after doing her best to pour oil on the waters of Mrs Eyrecourt's extreme disgust and unreasonable indignation. "Well, certainly, though I think it one of the most foolish marriages I ever heard of, which is saying a good deal; though I think them in every particular, except good looks, utterly unsuited to each other--and the chances are it will not take them long to find that out for themselves--yet I must say I never liked Beauchamp as much, or thought as well of him, as just now that he has done this most, foolish thing. And, though I am perfectly certain there is not the ghost of a chance that it will be so, I really do earnestly hope they may be happy." Then another remembrance occurred to her--"That infatuatedly faithful Mr Thurston, how will he take this, poor man, I wonder?" she thought, smiling slightly as she recalled him, for it is a curious fact that women can never pity Corydon's woes--"He would love, and she would not," without laughing at him a little too, even though he be, apart from Phillida, by no means a ludicrous or contemptible personage.