Dec. 10_th_.--Oh this deceitful disease! all the dreadful weakness has returned. Adeline cannot go downstairs now. She just comes from her chamber into the front room, and lies on the sofa the best part of the day. Madame de Castella, who fully believed in the amendment, giving way more than any one of us to the false hopes it excited, is nearly beside herself with grief and despair. She is perpetually reproaching herself for allowing Nurse Brayford to leave. The woman stayed here for a few days, but Adeline was so well it seemed a farce to keep her, and now she has taken another place and cannot return. I am glad she's gone, for my part. She could not do Adeline the slightest good, and she and the _garde_ kept up an incessant chatter in strange French. Brayford's French was something curious to listen to: 'Le feu est sorti,' she said one day, and sent Rose into a screaming fit. Signor de Castella we rarely see, except at dinner; now and then at the second déjeûner; but he is mostly shut up in his cabinet. Is it that the sight of his fading child is more than he can bear? Cold and reserved as he has always been, there's no doubt that he loves Adeline with the deepest love. 15_th_.--Five days, and Adeline not out of her bedroom! The cough has come back again, and the doctors say she must have taken cold. I don't see how she could; but Dr. Dorré's as cross as can be over it. A fancy has taken her these last few days to hear Rose sing English songs. On the first evening, Rose was in the front room, the intervening door being open, singing in a sweet, low voice to amuse herself; but Adeline listened and asked for more. More songs, only they must be English. "I think I have come to the end of my stock," answered Rose; "that is, all I can remember. Stay!--what was that long song so much in request this year at school? Do you remember the words, Mary Carr?" "How am I to know what song you mean?" I asked. "Some of us set it to music,--a low, soft chant. Last spring it was, after Adeline had left. You must remember it. It was strummed over for everlasting weeks by the whole set of us. It begins thus," added Rose, striking a few chords. I recollected then. They were lines we saw in a book belonging to that Emma Mowbray, an old, torn magazine, which had neither covers nor title-page. Some of the girls took a violent fancy to them, and somebody--Janet Duff, was it?--set them to music. "I have it," cried Rose, striking boldly into the song. Nearly with the first words Adeline rose into a sitting posture, her eyes strained in the direction of Rose though she could not see her, and eagerly listening. "When woman's eye grows dim, And her cheek paleth; When fades the beautiful, Then man's love faileth. He sits not beside her chair, Clasps not her fingers, Entwines not the damp hair That o'er her brow lingers.