“What a change in her life that single sheet of foreign paper might make,” she thought, as she kissed it and folded it, and enclosed in it two or three violets taken from a little bunch in front of her dress. Ere the letter had gone out of the house a load seemed lifted off her mind. In eight weeks at most the answer would come back; and the foolish girl sat down on the hearth-rug and began to reckon up the days! “He will come back himself,” she whispered to Tory, as he laid his head on her arm and blinked his eyes sagaciously. “And how glad we shall be to see him, Tory, you and I! He will sit between us here, at the fire, and he will scold me. He will lecture me dreadfully, Tory, but he is sure to be very pleased with you. I will tell him what a good boy you have been, and how you have kept me company.” In vain she watched and waited for an answer to her letter. Every morning, wet or dry, accompanied by Tory, she walked to the avenue-gates, and herself received the post-bag. How she looked out for the arrivals of the mails _viâ_ Brindisi, and reckoned up the days and hours till her much-desired letter could come! When the allotted two months had elapsed, and it did not appear, hope, instead of being silent, told a still more flattering tale. “He is coming himself; he may be here any day,” it said. For days, and even weeks, Alice deluded herself with this idea. A step, the sudden opening of a door, made her start and flush crimson. But time went on, her boy was born, and still no letter; so her heart hardened once more. Not only was she herself slighted and despised, but what outraged her feelings in their most sensitive point, her child was ignored. “He might have sent me even one little line; he is barbarous, cruel, unnatural,” were some of her bitter reflections. Miss Saville, a good-tempered, sensible, elderly lady, very fond of her niece, had come to Monkswood, and with her a new _régime_ commenced; no more untouched meals, no more “moping,” as she called it, permitted. But now that Alice had her baby to engross her mind, she was not so much inclined to live in the past as in the present. When she did think of her husband, it was with an indescribable mixture of remorse, indignation, and regret. The “confessions” from Cheetapore were duly forwarded to Alice, and were safely locked up in her dressing-case; but as he had not deigned to take any notice of her abject apology before the matter had been cleared up, it was unnecessary to trouble him with another appeal, even supposing her own pride would have permitted a second abasement, which it would not.