contest
them one by one, and the admirable pretender is not as shifty as the
mariner's breeze, he is not like the wandering spark in burnt paper, of
which you cannot say whether it is chasing or chased: it is I who am
the shifty Pole to the steadiest of magnets. She is a princess in other
things besides her superiority to Physics. There will be wild scenes at
Baden.

'My Diary of to-day is all bestowed on you. What have I to write in it
except the pair of commas under the last line of yesterday--"He has not
come!" Oh! to be caring for a he.

'O that I were with your sister now, on one side of her idol, to correct
her extravagant idolatry! I long for her. I had a number of nice little
phrases to pet her with.

'You have said (I have it written) that men who are liked by men are the
best friends for women. In which case, the earl should be worthy of our
friendship; he is liked. Captain Abrane and Sir Meeson, in spite of the
hard service he imposes on them with such comical haughtiness, incline
to speak well of him, and Methuen Rivers--here for two days on his way
to his embassy at Vienna--assured us he is the rarest of gentlemen on
the point of honour of his word. They have stories of him, to confirm
Livia's eulogies, showing him punctilious to chivalry: No man alive is
like him in that, they say. He grieves me. All that you have to fear is
my pity for one so sensitive. So speed, sir! It is not good for us to be
much alone, and I am alone when you are absent.

'I hear military music!

'How grand that music makes the dullest world appear in a minute.
There is a magic in it to bring you to me from the most dreadful of
distances.--Chillon! it would kill me!--Writing here and you perhaps
behind the hill, I can hardly bear it;--I am torn away, my hand will not
any more. This music burst out to mock me! Adieu.

'I am yours.

'Your HENRIETTA.

'A kiss to the sister. It is owing to her.'

Carinthia kissed the letter on that last line. It seemed to her to end
in a celestial shower.

She was oppressed by wonder of the writer who could run like the rill
of the mountains in written speech; and her recollection of the contents
perpetually hurried to the close, which was more in her way of writing,
for there the brief sentences had a throb beneath them.

She did not speak of the letter to her brother when she returned it. A
night in the carriage, against his shoulder, was her happy prospect,