Esther's eyes are brillianter than their wont; her cheeks are flushed with a deeper hue than the crimson lips of a foreign shell, but it is not the flush of a newly-departed sleep. The angel of slumber has passed by the portals of her brain, as the destroying angel passed by the blood-painted lintels of Israel. Thoughts sweeter than virgin honey, thoughts bitterer than gall, have kept her wakeful. Ere she went to bed, she spent three hours in writing letters of dismissal to Brandon, and at the end left him undismissed. "I _cannot_ write it to him!" she cries, sitting up in bed in the dark, and flinging out blind arms into the black nothingness around her; "anything written sounds so harsh, so abrupt, so hard. I must tell him myself very gradually and gently, and tell him how sorry I am, and beg him to forgive me, and cry--go down on my knees, perhaps. No; I should look such a fool if I did that! After all, no one cries long over spilt milk--least of all any one so sensible and utterly unimaginative as poor dear Bob." And with that, thinking in a disparaging, hold-cheap way of him and his love, she turns the pillow over to try and find a cooler place on the under side for her burning face to rest on. * * * * * "Two dissyllabic names now passing many mouths by three dissyllabic names are here expressed," reads Miss Blessington, with distinct gravity, after breakfast that morning, out of an acrostic book that lies on the work-table before her, while Esther sits opposite with pencil and paper, ready to write down the products of the joint wisdom of their two minds. But the top of the pencil is being bitten by the young scribe's short white teeth, and her eyes are straying away absently--away through the open window and out to the sunshiny sward, where two of St. John's dogs, forbidden by Sir Thomas on pain of death, to set paw within the house, are rolling over one another, making abortive bites at each other's hind legs, and waggishly, with much growling and mumbling, taking each other's heads into their mouths. "That is the whole," continues Constance. "These are the proofs; a woman, a wise man, a king, a poet, a beauty!" Silence. "A woman!" says Miss Blessington, cogitatively, resting her smooth chin on her hand, and looking vaguely round at the cabinets and busts for inspiration. Esther makes no suggestion. "A woman!" repeats Miss Blessington, raising her voice a little. Esther comes back to consciousness with a little jump. "Oh! I beg your pardon; I don't think I was attending. A----what did you say?" "A woman!" repeats Miss Blessington, for the third and last time. "A woman!" echoes Esther, vacantly; "that is rather vague, is it not? There have been a good many women, one way or another." "Let us try the next, then," says Constance, obligingly: "A wise man." "Solomon!" answers Esther, glibly. "I said a _dis_syllable name," remarks Constance, with gentle asperity.