Is it not strange how you may live on and live on in some quiet country spot, or retired suburb, without anything ever occurring to vary the dull monotony of its even existence; and yet, the moment you go away from this whilom, stagnant neighbourhood--which you had got to believe was everlastingly unchangeable--change then succeeds change with startling rapidity:--as you at a distance hear from those friends whom you had left behind--to simmer on there, as you had simmered on, until the end of the chapter? Of course, from having become more interested with the deeds and designs of those actors that might be connected with the new scenes amidst which you may now be situated, you will not attach such importance to these events as you would probably have done had you been yet living on in the time-honoured routine of your old abiding-place. They are to you, at present, only so many little fly-blows on the scroll of time, so to speak. But, there was a period when you would have regarded them as of the utmost moment; and when, the deaths of people whom you thought would never die, the marriages of those that seemed the most unlikely subjects for matrimony, the flittings of persons of the "oldest inhabitant" class--that you calculated would stick-on there for ever, and their replacement by the advent of new families, whom you would have supposed to be the last in the world to settle down in the locality in question-- would have been matters of nine days' wonderment. It was so now with myself in, regard to Saint Canon's. Horner's engagement, Lady Dasher's contemplated removal, the idea of the curate's incubus--all of which would have once filled me with surprise, astonishment, delight--I only looked upon with half-amused interest. Even the intelligence that Miss Spight had joined the sisterhood organised by Brother Ignatius, hardly affected me as it would formerly have done. I belonged to another world now, as it were; and, the announcements of births--Mrs Mawley had already presented her lord and master with a little pledge of her affection--and bridals, and burials, at the two last of which I might once have assisted, hardly awoke a passing interest in me! I was too far removed from the orbit in which these phenomena were displayed. I felt that there were not many now in whom I felt concern at Saint Canon's. No exceptions, you ask? Certainly, there were exceptions. I am astonished at your making the observation. How could I otherwise "prove the rule," eh? Min told me that Monsieur Parole d'Honneur was as gay and as full of anecdote as of yore. She also told me, too, that the kind-hearted Frenchman having chanced to meet her out one day, long before she had been able to hear from me directly, had, in the most delicately- diplomatic way, led the conversation round to America, so that he might tell her that I was not only well, but doing well!