on the plea of a migraine, remained till late in her own apartments), Walter failed not to remark that her eyes were red and heavy, and that her manner was more constrained than usual; neither did it escape his observation when Sunday arrived, that the tasteful little hat had been strangely metamorphosed, and that when he rallied her on her capricious love of changes, which had only spoiled what was before so becoming, she stole a half-fearful glance at Adrienne, while rather confusedly replying that "it was not her _own_ doing, but that Ma'amselle Justine, her cousin's femme-de-chambre, had been permitted by the latter to arrange it more fashionably." The subject dropped then, and was never resumed; but Walter _then_ made his own comments on it. And now that the peculiar tone of Adrienne's letters in referring to Madelaine brought former circumstances vividly to mind, it is not surprising that he fell into a fit of musing on the _possibility_, which he yet rebuked himself for suspecting. It must be confessed that his reflections on the subject were of a less displeasing nature than those which had suggested themselves on former occasions, before epistolary correspondence with his fair betrothed had given him that insight into her character and feelings which, strange to say, he had failed to obtain during their personal communication. Now he felt assured, that if indeed she were susceptible of the weakness he had dared to suspect, it was mingled with no unkindly feelings towards her unoffending cousin, but sprang solely from the peculiar sensitiveness of her nature, and the exclusive delicacy of her affection for himself. Where ever was the lover--(we say not the husband)--who could dwell but with tenderest indulgence on an infirmity of love so flattering to his own self-love and self-complacency? We suspect that Walter's fervour was anything but cooled by the fancied discovery; and his doubts on the subject, if he still harboured any, were wholly dispelled by a postscript to Adrienne's next letter, almost amounting, singular as was the construction, to an avowal of her own weakness. In the three fair pages of close writing of which that letter consisted, was vouchsafed no word of reply to an interrogatory--the last, he secretly resolved, he would ever venture on that subject--whether his "little cousin Madelaine," as he had sometimes sportively called her by anticipation, had quite forgotten her friend Walter. But on one of the outside folds, evidently an after-thought, written hurriedly, and, as it seemed, with a trembling hand, was the following postscript:-- "La Petite Madelaine se souvient toujours du bon Walter--Comment férait-elle autrement? "Mais, cependant, qu'il ne soit plus question d'elle dans les lettres de Mons. Walter."