Some weeks now have passed since my return to the Tower; the Castletons are gone, and all Trevanion's gay guests. And since these departures, visits between the two houses have been interchanged often, and the bonds of intimacy are growing close. Twice has my father held long conversations apart with Lady Ulverstone (my mother is not foolish enough to feel a pang now at such confidences), and the result has become apparent. Lady Ulverstone has ceased all talk against the world and the public, ceased to fret the galled pride of her husband with irritating sympathy. She has made herself the true partner of his present occupations, as she was of those in the past; she takes interest in farming, and gardens, and flowers, and those philosophical peaches which come from trees academical that Sir William Temple reared in his graceful retirement. She does more,--she sits by her husband's side in the library, reads the books he reads, or if in Latin, coaxes him into construing them. Insensibly she leads hire into studies farther and farther remote from the Blue Books and Hansard; and taking my father's hint,-- "Allures to brighter worlds, and leads the way." They are inseparable. Darby-and-Joan-like, you see them together in the library, the garden, or the homely little pony-phaeton for which Lord Ulverstone has resigned the fasttrotting cob once identified with the eager looks of the busy Trevanion. It is most touching, most beautiful! And to think what a victory over herself the proud woman must have obtained! Never a thought that seems to murmur, never a word to recall the ambitious man back from the philosophy into which his active mind flies for refuge. And with the effort her brow has become so serene! That careworn expression which her fine features once wore, is fast vanishing. And what affects me most, is to think that this change (which is already settling into happiness) has been wrought by Austin's counsels and appeals to her sense and affection. "It is to you," he said, "that Trevanion must look for more than comfort,--for cheerfulness and satisfaction. Your child is gone from you; the world ebbs away: you two should be all in all to each other. Be so." Thus, after paths so devious, meet those who have parted in youth, now on the verge of age,-- there, in the same scenes where Austin and Ellinor had first formed acquaintance; he aiding her to soothe the wounds inflicted by the ambition that had separated their lots, and both taking counsel to insure the happiness of the rival she had preferred. After all this vexed public life of toil and care and ambition, to see Trevanion and Ellinor drawing closer and closer to each other, knowing private life and its charms for the first time,--verily, it would have been a theme for an elegiast like Tibullus.