I did not see his lordship again until dinner time; and we had almost finished our repast, before the poet made his appearance and his bow. His bow was as usual, but his appearance was strangely changed. His hair stood in stiff ringlets on his forehead, and he had pruned his bushy eyebrows, till hardly one bristle remained; while a pair of white gloves, small enough for myself, were forced upon his hands. He glanced at us with a conscious eye, and hurried to his seat at table. 'Ovid's Metamorphoses, by Jupiter!' exclaimed Montmorenci. 'Why, Higginson, how shameful for the mice to have nibbled your eyebrows, while Apollo Belvidere was curling your hair!' The poet blushed, and ate with great assiduity. 'My dear fellow,' continued his lordship, 'we can dispense with those milk-white gloves during dinner. Tell me, are they mamma's, dear mamma's?' 'I will tell my mother of you!' cried the poet, half rising from his chair. Now his mother is an old bed-ridden lady in one of the garrets. I then interfered in his behalf, and peace was restored. After dinner, I took an opportunity, when the landlady had left the room, to request ten pounds from his lordship, for the purpose of paying the milliner. Never was regret so finely pictured in a face as in his, while he swore that he had not a penny upon earth. Indeed so graceful was his lamentation, so interesting his penury, that though the poet stole out of the room for ten pounds, which he slipped into my hand, I preferred the refusal of the one to the donation of the other. Yes, this amiable young nobleman increases in my estimation every moment. Never can you catch him out of a picturesque position. He would exhaust in an hour all the attitudes of all the statues; when he talks tenderness, his eyes glow with a moist fire, and he always brings in his heart with peculiar happiness. Then too, his oaths are at once well conceived and elegantly expressed. Thunderbolts and the fixed stars are ever at his elbow, and no man can sink himself to perdition with so fine a grace. But I could write of him, talk of him, think of him, hour after hour, minute after minute; even now, while the shadows of night are blackening the blushes of the rose, till dawn shall stain with her ruddy fire, the snows of the naked Apennine; till the dusky streams shall be pierced with darts of light, and the sun shall quaff his dewy beverage from the cup of the tulip, and the chalice of the lily. That is pretty painting. Adieu. LETTER XII 'It is my lady, O it is my love!' exclaimed Lord Altamont Mortimer Montmorenci, as he flew, like a winged mercury, into my apartment this morning. A loud rap at the door checked his eloquence, and spoiled a most promising posture. 'Is Miss Wilkinson within?' said a voice in the hall. 'No such person lives here,' replied the maid, who was accustomed to hear me called Miss Donald. 'But there does, and on the ground-floor too, and I will find her out, I warrant,' cried the same voice.