"'So you get letters from him, do you? I have never known this. You know, _ma cherie_, that that is against the rules of my _pension_; but when people are married,--_c'est une autre chose_! But how is it that I have never found this out? Ah, because you have charge of all the letters to and from the post!' "'Yes, Madame,' she said, looking up with a smile. 'I have sometimes felt so unhappy, because I seemed to be doing a _dishonest_ thing; but it would have been so hard to go without them, and I knew how kind and good you were. If you would like to see one of his letters,' she continued, half shyly, but with dignified gravity, 'I have one here'; and she drew a large letter from her pocket and handed it to me. "Here it is," said Madame, taking the first from the bundle in her hand. The handwriting was firm and regular; the letter was long, but, though the whole breathed but one feeling of the deepest and tenderest affection, it was hardly what would be called a "love-letter." There were criticisms of new works, and further references to books of a kind that showed the writer to be a man of scholarly tastes. After we had looked at this one, Madame handed us others from the packet, all marked by the same characteristics as the first. Here and there were little pictures of the writer's every-day life. He told of his being out on the moors at sunrise shooting with his Cousin Marmaduke, or riding round the estate giving orders about the transplanting of certain trees, "which are set as you have suggested, and are growing as fast as they can till you come to walk under their shade," or in the library at evening, when the place beside him seems so void where she should be. Then there were other letters, speaking of ---- ----, the poet, who was coming down to spend a few weeks with him, and write verses under his elms at Aylesford Grange; but in one and all Lina was the central idea round which all other interests merely turned, and the source from which all else drew its charm. "As soon," said Madame, continuing her narration, "as I had finished reading the letter, I entreated Lina to go on with her curious history.