of his daughter which arrests every eye in
Ary Scheffer's sacred pictures. She was
silent and sad; her cherished plan of life was
uprooted. She talked to me a little in a soft
and friendly manner, answering any questions
I asked; but, as for the gentlemen, her
indifference and reserve made it impossible for
them to enter into any conversation with
her; and the meeting was indisputably
"flat."

"Oh! my romance! my poetical justice!
Before the evening was half over, I would
have given up all my castles in the air for
one well-sustained conversation of ten
minutes long. Now don't laugh at me, for I
can't bear it to-night." Such was my friend's
parting speech. I did not see her again for
two days. The third she came in glowing
with excitement.

"You may congratulate me after all; if it
was not poetical justice, it is prosaic justice;
and, except for the empty romance, that is a
better thing!"

"What do you mean?" said I. " Surely M.
du Fay has not proposed for Susan?"

"No! but that charming M. de Frez, his
friend, has; that is to say, not proposed but
spoken; no, not spoken, but it seems he
asked M. du Fay—whose confidant he was—
if he was intending to proceed in his idea of
marrying Suzette; and on hearing that he
was not, M. de Frez said that he should come
to us, and ask us to put him in the way of
prosecuting the acquaintance, for that he
had been charmed with her; looks, voice,
silence, he admires them all; and we have
arranged that he is to be the escort to
England; he has business there, he says;
and as for Suzette, (she knows nothing of all
this, of course, for who dared tell her?) all
her anxiety is to return home, and the first
person travelling to England will satisfy her,
if it does us. And, after all, M. de Frez lives
within five leagues of the Château Chalabre,
so she can go and see the old place whenever
she will."

When I went to bid Susan goodbye, she
looked as unconscious and dignified as ever.
No idea of a lover had ever crossed her
mind. She considered M. de Frez as a
kind of necessary incumbrance for the journey.
I had not much hopes for him; and
yet he was an agreeable man enough, and my
friends told me that his character stood firm
and high.

In three months, I was settled for the
winter in Rome. In four, I heard that the
marriage of Susan Chalabre had taken place.
What were the intermediate steps between
the cold, civil indifference with which I had
last seen her regarding her travelling
companion, and the full love with which such a
woman as Suzette Chalabre must love a man
before she could call him husband, I never
learnt. I wrote to my old French master to
congratulate him, as I believed I honestly
might, on his daughter's marriage. It was
some months before I received his answer.
It was:—

"Dear friend, dear old pupil, dear child of
the beloved dead, I am an old man of eighty,
and I tremble towards the grave. I cannot
write many words; but my own hand shall
bid you come to the home of Aimée and her
husband. They tell me to ask you to come
and see the old father's birthplace, while he
is yet alive, to show it to you. I have the
very apartment in Château Chalabre that
was mine when I was a boy, and my mother
came in to bless me every night. Susan lives
near us. The good God bless my sons-in-law,
Bertrand de Frez and Alphonse du Fay, as
He has blessed me all my life long. I think
of your father and mother, my dear; and you
must think no harm when I tell you I have
had masses said for the repose of their souls.
If I make a mistake, God will forgive."

My heart could have interpreted this letter
even without the pretty letter of Aimée and
her husband which accompanied it, and
which told how, when M. du Fay came over
to his friend's wedding, he had seen the
younger sister, and in her seen his fate. The
soft, caressing, timid Aimée was more to his
taste than the grave and stately Susan. Yet
little Aimée managed to rule imperiously at
Château Chalabre; or rather, her husband
was delighted to indulge her every wish:
while Susan, in her grand way, made rather
a pomp of her conjugal obedience. But they
were both good wives, good daughters.

This last summer, you might have seen an
old, old man, dressed in grey, with white flowers
in his button-hole (fathered by a grandchild
as fair as they), leading an elderly lady about
the grounds of Château Chalabre, with tottering,
unsteady eagerness of gait.

"Here!" said he to me, "just here my
mother bade me adieu when first I went to
join my regiment. I was impatient to go; I
mounted—I rode to yonder great chestnut,
and then, looking back, I saw my mother's
sorrowful countenance. I sprang off", threw
the reins to the groom, and ran back for one
more embrace. ' My brave boy!' she said;
' my own! Be faithful to God and your
king!' I never saw her more; but I shall
see her soon; and I think I may tell her I
have been faithful both to my God and my
king."

Before now, he has told his mother all.

             THE ROVING ENGLISHMAN.
                      A GREEK FEAST.

I AM in Mytilene; on storied ground, for
Mytilene is the ancient Lesbos, and one of
the largest and most beautiful islands of the
Ægean Sea. It is situated on the coast of
Asia, between Tenedos on the north, and
Chios on the south. Its first inhabitants
were the Pelasgii. It then became an Eolian
colony, and attained great prosperity,