To please this whimsical little creature, Thaddeus turned to the letter, and read it forward with a pathos natural to his voice and character. When he came to an end and closed the volume, the cadence of his tones, and the lady's memory, did ample justice to her sensibility. She looked up, and smiling through her watery eyes, which glittered like violets wet with dew, drew out her perfumed handkerchief, and wiping them, said-- "I thank you, Mr. Constantine. You see by this irrepressible emotion that I feel Goethe, and did not ask you a vain favor." Thaddeus bowed, for he was at a loss to guess what kind of a reply could be expected by so strange a creature. She continued-- "You are a German, Mr. Constantine. Did you ever see Charlotte?" "Never, madam." "I am sorry for that; I should have liked to have heard what sort of a beauty she was. But don't you think she behaved cruelly to Werter? Perhaps you knew him?" "No, madam; this lamentable story happened before I was born." "How unhappy for him! I am sure you would have made the most charming friends in the world! Have you a friend, Mr. Constantine." The count looked at her with surprise. She laughed at the expression of his countenance. "I don't mean such friends as one's father, mother, sisters and relations: most people have enough of them. I mean a tender, confiding friend, to whom you unbosom all your secrets: who is your other self--a second soul! In short, a creature in whose existence you forget your own!" Thaddeus followed with his eyes the heightened color of the fair enthusiast, who, accompanying her rhapsody with action expressive as her words, had to repeat her question, "Have you such a friend?" before he found recollection to answer her in the negative. The count, who had never been used to such extravagant behavior in a woman, would have regarded Miss Euphemia Dundas as little better than insane had he not been prepared by Miss Egerton's description; and he now acquiesced in the young lady's desire to detain him another hour, half amused and half wearied with her aimless and wild fancies. But here he was mistaken. Her fancies were not aimless; his heart was the game she had in view, and she determined a desperate attack should make it her own, in return for the deep wounds she had received from every tone of his voice, whilst reading the Sorrows of Werter. CHAPTER XXIV. LADY TINEMOUTH'S BOUDOIR.