“My carriage, I tell you.--Emilie, you have been up all night: I insist upon your going to bed this minute, and upon your sleeping till I come back again. La comtesse always breakfasts in her own room; so I have no apologies to make for leaving her. I shall be at home before her toilette is finished, and hope she will then permit me to pay my respects to her--you will tell her so, my dear. I must be gone instantly.--Why will they not let me have this carriage?--Where are those gloves of mine?--and the key of my writing-desk?--Ring again for the coach.” Between the acting of a generous thing and the first motion, all the interim was, with Mrs. Somers, a delicious phantasma; and her ideas of time and distance were as extravagant as those of a person in a dream. She very nearly ran over Emilie in her way down stairs, and then said, “Oh! I beg pardon a thousand times, my dear!--I thought you had been in bed an hour ago.” The toilette of Mad. de Coulanges, this morning, went on at the usual rate. Whether in adversity or prosperity, this was to la comtesse an elaborate, but never a tedious work. Long as it had lasted, it was, however, finished; and she had full leisure for a fit and a half of the vapours, before Mrs. Somers returned--she came in with a face radiant with joy. “Fortunately, most fortunately,” cried she, “I have it in my power to repair the loss occasioned by the failure of this good-for-nothing banker! Nay, positively, Mad. de Coulanges, I must not be refused,” continued she, in a peremptory manner. “You make an enemy, if you refuse a friend.” She laid a pocket-book on the table, and left the room instantly. The pocket-book contained notes to a very considerable amount, surpassing the sum which Mad. de Coulanges had lost by her banker; and on a scrap of paper was written in pencil “Mad. de Coulanges must never return this sum, for it is utterly useless to Mrs. Somers; as the superfluities it was appropriated to purchase are now in the possession of one who will not sell them.” Astonished equally at the magnitude and the manner of the gift, Mad. de Coulanges repeated, a million of times, that it was “noble! très noble! une belle action!”--that she could not possibly accept of such an obligation--that she could not tell how to refuse it--that Mrs. Somers was the most generous woman upon earth--that Mrs. Somers had thrown her into a terrible embarrassment. Then la comtesse had recourse to her smelling-bottle, consulted Emilie’s eyes, and answered them. “Child! I have no thoughts of accepting; but I only ask you how I can refuse, after what has been said, without making Mrs. Somers my enemy? You see her humour--English humours must not be trifled with--her humour, you see, is to give. It is a shocking thing for people of our birth to be reduced to receive, but we cannot avoid it without losing Mrs. Somers’ friendship entirely; and that is what you would not wish to do, Emilie.” “Oh, no, indeed!”