but it has come, and with it a fear of this man's hatred, greater, if possible, than my horror of his love. There, I have recorded it, and now I will try to turn my mind from it--I will try to write to Alston a cheery letter, a pious fraud. When you told me, dearest Alston, that my letters were to take the form of a journal, I remember thinking of the passage in our pet book, the _Vicar of Wakefield_, in which Dr. Primrose describes the vicissitudes of primroses' existence, and summoning them up in migrations from the blue bed to the brown. My journal, if I keep it at all within the actual sense of the term, would record nothing more strange or exciting. I migrate from the nursery to the parlour, from the parlour to the park, from the park to the nursery; but my chief sojourn is in the latter place. I never could have imagined that a baby could give one so much to do, even when one is assisted, as I am, by the most capable of nurses, concerning whom I have a lot to tell you presently; neither could I have believed that a baby could be so interesting. We made up our minds, you remember, that we were not going to plague our neighbours, and make fools of ourselves, by advancing the claims of this remarkable infant to be quite the finest, the most intelligent, and the most precocious that ever existed. Bearing this resolution in mind, I endeavoured to be a very rational mother, but I protest, quite genially, that I do not want any society except baby's, until the kind Fates send me that of baby's papa. The child has become so strong and healthy that I am no longer in the least uneasy about her; therefore she is a pure unmitigated pleasure to me; and the real truth is that if I am to tell you all about my daily life, I fear you will suffer from the plethora of baby. Of course, I read and work, and visit and receive some people sometimes--not many and not often; and, of course, I get out and do some shopping. I bought the loveliest pelisse, yesterday, that ever was seen out of Paris, and I believe it came from there; and then, again, even shopping has come to mean baby--the pelisse was for her, not for me. I play the piano, sometimes, a little--nurse says baby is beginning to take notice of music. But after all this is not my life, you know; it is only the outside of it, and one shell is very like another.