Grandmamma and Aunt Caroline--perhaps myself, who knows?--are in a great state of excitement to-day because a niece of theirs is coming here on a visit. I heard of her existence for the first time last week, and immediately decided to invite her to Fletcher's Hall. For, Constance, let me whisper it, the old ladies--bless their hearts!--are killing me. This person, Ida Seymour by name, is a spinster of some forty winters, a kind of roving, charitable star, from what I gather, who spends her life visiting from place to place with a trunkful of fancy work, pious books, and innocent sources of amusement,--a fairy godmother to old ladies, pauper children, and bazaars. My vanity has run its course, and I shall gladly yield the place of honour to this worthy soul. May she stay long! That is absolutely all the news I have for you, and, indeed, it is more than you deserve; for you are about as lazy as you are sweet, which is saying a good deal. If I don't get a letter to-morrow, I shall be on the brink of despair. At the approach of post time, I am nearly ill with anticipation, and afterwards fall headlong into deepest melancholy. Your ill-used EMILIA. LETTER XII. GRAYSMILL, October 10th. Sweet, your letter of Thursday comforted me wondrous much; but I have something to tell you, and my impatience will not even let me dwell on the joy it was to read words of yours again. Well; yesterday was a dull day, the sky was covered all the morning, and at dinner-time it began to rain. I sat in my room in the afternoon and read "Richard Feverel" until, looking up from my book, I saw that the rain had ceased. The wind had risen, and, in the west, a hole had been poked through the grey mantle, showing the gilded edge of a snowy cloud against a patch of blue. Out I ran, across the garden and the little park that touches the heath, then through my dear beechwood until I reached a certain clearing where the ground goes sheer down at one's feet and where one may behold, over the tree-tops, stretches of wood and meadow in the plain below. I sprang on to a knoll, and there stood breathless, watching the rout of the tumbled clouds.