Soon after she had finished her song, while I was still in the thrall of it, a servant entered the room with a packet for Severnius, who opened and read it with evident surprise and delight. "Elodia!" he cried, "those friends of mine, those Caskians from Lunismar, are coming to make us a visit." "Indeed!" she answered, without much enthusiasm, and Severnius turned to me. "It is on your account, my friend, that I am to be indebted to them for this great pleasure," he explained. "On my account?" said I. "Yes, they have heard about you, and are extremely anxious to make your acquaintance?" "They must be," said Elodia, "to care to travel a thousand miles or so in order to do it." "Who are they, pray?" I asked. "They are a people so extraordinarily good," she said with a laugh, "so refined and sublimated, that they cast no shadow in the sun." Severnius gave her a look of mild protest. "They are a race exactly like ourselves, outwardly," he said, "who inhabit a mountainous and very picturesque country called Caskia, in the northern part of this continent." "O, that is where the Perfect Pair came from," I rejoined, remembering what he had told me about Man's origin on Mars. Elodia smiled. "Has Severnius been entertaining you with our religious fables?" she asked. I glanced at him and saw that he had not heard; he was finishing his letter. "You will be interested in these Caskians," he said to me animatedly as he folded it up; "I was. I spent some months in Lunismar, their capital, once, studying. They have rare facilities for reading the heavens there,--I mean of their own contrivance,--beside their natural advantages; their high altitude and the clearness of the air." "And they name themselves after the planetoids and other heavenly bodies," interjected Elodia, "because they live so near the stars. What is the name of the superlative creature you were so charmed with, Severnius?" "I suppose you mean my friend Calypso's wife, Clytia," returned he. "O, yes, I remember,--Clytia. Is she to favor us?" "Yes, and her husband and several others." "Any other women?" "One or two, I think." "And how are we to conduct ourselves during the visitation?" "As we always do; you will not find that they will put any constraint upon you." "No, hardly," said Elodia, with a slight curl of the lip. I was eager to hear more about these singular people,--the more eager, perhaps, because the thought of them seemed to arouse Elodia to an unwonted degree of feeling and interest. Her eyes glowed intensely, and the color flamed brightly in her cheeks. I pressed a question or two upon Severnius, and he responded: