"No," said Miss Carr, in a half-joking manner, "there may be secrets in it that I don't care to read before people." And Rose, whose curiosity was excited, could have boxed her ears. "Mr. St. John writes that his mother is better," said Madame de Castella; "the injuries prove less serious than they were at first supposed. By the next post, he hopes to send us word that she is out of danger." "This letter, Adeline," exclaimed Mary Carr, when they were alone--"I fancy it may not be meant for me." "You can open it," replied Adeline, timidly. "Perhaps--I think--there may be one for me inside it." Mary Carr opened the letter. It contained a few polite words from Mr. St. John, requesting her to convey the enclosed one to Adeline at a convenient opportunity. "You see how it is?" faltered Adeline to her. "I have seen it long, Adeline." Adeline carried the letter to her chamber to read, bolting the door that she might be free from interruption. It was a long letter, written far more sensibly than are love-epistles in general, for it was impossible to Mr. St. John to write otherwise; but there was a vein of impassioned tenderness running through it, implied rather than expressed, which surely ought to have satisfied even Adeline. But the bitter doubts imparted by Rose that fatal night cast their shadow over all. Not a moment of peace or happiness had she known since. Her visions by day, her dreams by night, were crowded by images of Frederick St. John, faithless to her, happy with another. Nor did Sarah Beauclerc want a "shape to the mind." The day after St. John's departure, they were looking over the last year's "Book of Beauty," when Rose suddenly exclaimed, as she came to one, "This is very like Sarah Beauclerc!" "It was great nonsense, Rose, that tale you were telling us!" cried Adeline, with a desperate struggle to speak calmly. "It was sober sense, and sober truth," retorted Rose. "Not it," said Mary Carr. "It was but a flirtation, Rose." "Very likely," assented Rose, volatile as usual. "Being an attractive man, Mr. Frederick St. John no doubt goes in for the game, roaming from flower to flower, a very butterfly, kissing all, and settling upon none." And she brought her careless speech to a conclusion with the first lines of an old song, once in great vogue at Madame de Nino's:-- "The butterfly was a gentleman Of no very good repute; And he roved in the sunshine all day long, In his scarlet and purple suit. And he left his lady wife at home In her own secluded bower, Whilst he, like a bachelor, flirted about, With a kiss for every flower.".