"I am weary of my life, sometimes, without you,--here, where you ought to be,--_your home_, Lina! I wander through the rooms that I have prepared with such delight for you, and think of the time when you will be here,--mistress of all!... When will you come, my wife? I think and dream in this way till I am haunted by the ghost of the future. I get morbid, and fancy all kinds of dangers that may happen to my darling, so far away from me; and then I am ready to go at once to you and break down all barriers and bear you away.... I thank Heaven you have so good a friend in '_Madame_.' I long for the time to come when I may greet her as one of my best friends for your sake. In the mean time, I have selected an Indian cabinet, the grotesque delicate work of which would please your quaint fancy, which I trust she will accept, if you will join me in the gift. I shall have an opportunity of sending it in a few weeks.... Mrs. Eldridge, my dear old housekeeper, has just been in. She wishes to know whether the new curtains of the little library are to be crimson or gray. She little knows what confusion she causes me! She knows not that I am no longer master here! I tell her I will deliberate on the point, and she retires mystified by my unusual indecision. So write quickly and make known your desires, if you wish to save me from an imputation of becoming, as the good old-lady says, 'a little set and bachelor-like in my ways.' Marmaduke and ---- come down next week to shoot.... You say, wait till spring, when things will be more propitious for disclosing our marriage. I have also another scheme which will be ripened by spring. I shall disclose our marriage, and propose to your father to make him independent of his ward. No one, certainly, has a better right to do this than his son-in-law; and then----But I hardly dare to think of the happiness that will be mine when nothing but death can part us any more!" "One evening about this time," continued Madame, "about a week after Lina had shown me this letter, I came down into the _cabinet de musique_ on my way to the garden to take my usual evening walk on the terrace, and saw Lina standing by the piano with her bonnet on and her shawl laid beside her. In her hand she held letters, one of which she had that moment unsealed. She had, I knew, just returned from the post-office. "'I have a letter here from Mrs. Baxter, Madame,' she said. 'She writes to me in great distress; the two children, Minnie and Louisa, whom she was so anxious to send here, are both ill with scarlet-fever. But here is your letter; she will no doubt tell you everything herself.'