7_th_.--Madame de Nino called today, bringing two of the elder girls. Adeline asked them innumerable questions about the school, and seemed really awakened to interest. Many other friends have also called; compared with the gloomy solitude of the château, each day since our arrival has been like a levee. The doctors apparently see no impropriety in this, for they don't forbid it. _I_ think Adeline is better for it: she has not the leisure to brood so entirely over the past. She is still silent on the subject of her misery, never hinting at it. Mr. St. John's name is not mentioned by any one, and the scenes and events of the last six months might be a dream, for all the allusion ever made to them. Never was she so beautiful as she is now; delicate and fragile of course, but that is a great charm in woman's loveliness. Her features are more than ever conspicuous for their exquisite contour, her soft brown eyes are of a sweeter sadness, her cheeks glow with a transparent rose colour. Visitors look at her with astonishment, almost question the fact of her late dangerous illness, and say she is getting well. But there is no exertion: listless and inanimate she sits, or lies, her trembling, fevered hands holding one or other of the English journals--looking in them for a name that she never finds. Yesterday Rose was reading to her in a volume of Shelley, when a letter from England was brought in, its superscription in the handwriting of Mrs. Darling. Adeline looked up, eager and flushed, signing to Rose to open it. Madame de Castella has stared in her ladylike way at this betrayed emotion whenever letters come for Rose. _We_ understand it: and Rose always reads them to her. The Darlings are in London, know people that Mr. St. John knows, and Adeline thinks there may be a chance that his name will be mentioned in these letters. "The letter will keep," said Rose, glancing cursorily into it; and she laid it down and resumed her book. "I love, but I believe in love no more, I feel desire, but hope not. Oh, from Sleep Most vainly must my weary brain implore Its long-lost flattery now: I wake to weep, And sit, the long day, gnawing through the core Of my bitter heart----" I looked up at her, involuntarily, it was so applicable; Rose also made a momentary stop, and her glance wandered in the same direction. Adeline's eyes met ours. It was one of those awkward moments that will happen to all; and the flush on Adeline's cheek deepened to crimson. It was very applicable: "I wake to weep, And sit, the long day, gnawing through the core Of my bitter heart." Alas! alas!