I have no need to tell you my answer. It satisfied _him_, and made mine the happiest heart in the world. And now we are to be married, dearest, in a fortnight or three weeks,--as soon, in fact, as maybe; and then we are to take a short tour to Rome and Naples, where Sir Penrhyn's yacht is to meet us; after which we visit Malta, coast along Spain, and home. Home sounds delightfully when it means all that one's fondest fancies can weave of country, of domestic happiness, of duties heartily entered on, and of affections well repaid. Penrhyn is very splendid; the castle is of feudal antiquity, and the grounds are princely in extent and beauty. Sir Morris is justly proud of his ancestral possessions, and longs to show me its stately magnificence; but still more do I long for the moment when my dear Miss Cox will be my guest, and take up her quarters in a certain little room that opens on a terraced garden overlooking the sea. I fixed on the spot the very instant I saw a drawing of the castle, and I am certain you will not find it in your heart to refuse me what will thus make up the perfect measure of my happiness. In all the selfishness of my joy, I have forgotten to tell you of Florence; but, in truth, it would require a calmer head than mine to talk of galleries and works of art while my thoughts are running on the bright realities of my condition. It is true we go everywhere and see everything, but I am in such a humor to be pleased that I am delighted with all, and can be critical to nothing. I half suspect that art, as art, is a source of pleasure to a very few. I mean that the number is a limited one which can enter into all the minute excellences of a great work, appreciate justly the difficulties overcome, and value deservingly the real triumph accomplished. For myself, I know and feel that painting has its greatest charm for me in its power of suggestiveness, and, consequently, the subject is often of more consequence than the treatment of it; not that I am cold to the chaste loveliness of a Raphael, or indifferent to the gorgeous beauty of a Giordano. They appeal to me, however, in somewhat the same way, and my mind at once sets to work upon an ideal character of the creation before me. That this same admiration of mine is a very humble effort at appreciating artistic excellence, I want no better proof than the fact that it is exactly what Betty Cobb herself felt on being shown the pictures in "the Pitti." Her honest worship of a Madonna at once invested her with every attribute of goodness, and the painter, could he only have heard the praises she uttered, might have revelled in the triumph of an art that can rise above the mere delineation of external beauty. That the appeal to her own heart was direct, was evidenced by her constant reference to some living resemblance to the picture before her. Now it was a saintly hermit by Caracci,--that was the image of Peter Delany at