This little freedom (which, to another, would have appeared nothing) was received with a degree of blushing confusion, that assured me it was the first of the kind ever offered; even the fair hand blushed its sense of my boldness, and enhanced the pleasure of the theft by the difficulty it promised of again obtaining a similar favour. By heaven there is infection in the sensitive delicacy of this creature, which even my hardened confidence cannot resist. No _prieux Chevalier_, on being permitted to kiss the tip of his liege lady’s finger, after a seven years’ seige, could feel more pleasantly embarrassed than I did, as we walked on in silence, until we were happily relieved by the presence of the old garrulous nurse, who came out in search of her young lady--for, like the princesses in the Greek tragedies, _my_ Princess seldom appears without the attendance of this faithful representative of fond maternity. For the rest of the walk she talked mostly to the nurse in Irish, and at the castle gate we parted--she to attend a patient, and I to retire to my own apartment, to ruminate on my morning’s ram ble with this fascinating _lusus naturo_. Adieu, H. M. LETTER XI. TO J. D. ESQ., M. P. The drawing which I made of the castle is finished--the Prince is charmed with it, and Glorvina insisted on copying it. This was as I expected--as I wished; and I took care to finish it so minutely, that her patience (of which she has no great store) should soon be exhausted in the imitation, and I should have something more of her attention than she generally affords me at my drawing-desk. Yesterday, in the absence of the priest, I read to her as she drew. After a thousand little symptoms of impatience and weariness--“here,” said she, yawning--“here is a straight line I can make nothing of--do you know, Mr. Mortimer, I never could draw a perpendicular line in my life. See now my pencil _will_ go into a curve or an angle; so you must guide my hand, or I shall----” I “guide her hand to draw a straight line!” “Nay then,” said I, with the ostentatious gravity of a pedagogue master, “I may as well do the drawing myself.” “Well then,” said she, playfully, “_do_ it yourself.” Away she flew to her harp; while I, half lamenting, half triumphing, in my forbearance, took her pencil and her seat. I perceived, however, that she had not even drawn a single line of the picture, and yet her paper was not a mere _carte-blanche_--for close to the margin was written in a fairy hand, ‘_Henry Mortimer_, April 2d, 10 o’clock,’--the very day and hour of my entrance into the castle; and in several places, the half defaced features of a face evidently a copy of my own, were still visible. If any thing could have rendered this little circumstance more deliciously gratifying to my heart, it was, that I had been just reading to her the anecdote of “the _Maid of Corinth_.”