e. My Sisera lay quiet
in the tent, slumbering; and if his pain ached through his slumbers,
something like an angel--the ideal--knelt near, dropping balm on the
soothed temples, holding before the sealed eyes a magic glass, of which
the sweet, solemn visions were repeated in dreams, and shedding a
reflex from her moonlight wings and robe over the transfixed sleeper,
over the tent threshold, over all the landscape lying without. Jael,
the stern woman; sat apart, relenting somewhat over her captive; but
more prone to dwell on the faithful expectation of Heber coming home.
By which words I mean that the cool peace and dewy sweetness of the
night filled me with a mood of hope: not hope on any definite point,
but a general sense of encouragement and heart-ease.

Should not such a mood, so sweet, so tranquil, so unwonted, have been
the harbinger of good? Alas, no good came of it! I Presently the rude
Real burst coarsely in--all evil grovelling and repellent as she too
often is.

Amid the intense stillness of that pile of stone overlooking the walk,
the trees, the high wall, I heard a sound; a casement [all the windows
here are casements, opening on hinges] creaked. Ere I had time to look
up and mark where, in which story, or by whom unclosed, a tree overhead
shook, as if struck by a missile; some object dropped prone at my feet.

Nine was striking by St. Jean Baptiste's clock; day was fading, but it
was not dark: the crescent moon aided little, but the deep gilding of
that point in heaven where the sun beamed last, and the crystalline
clearness of a wide space above, sustained the summer twilight; even in
my dark walk I could, by approaching an opening, have managed to read
print of a small type. Easy was it to see then that the missile was a
box, a small box of white and coloured ivory; its loose lid opened in
my hand; violets lay within, violets smothering a closely folded bit of
pink paper, a note, superscribed, "Pour la robe grise." I wore indeed a
dress of French grey.

Good. Was this a billet-doux? A thing I had heard of, but hitherto had
not had the honour of seeing or handling. Was it this sort of commodity
I held between my finger and thumb at this moment?

Scarcely: I did not dream it for a moment. Suitor or admirer my very
thoughts had not conceived. All the teachers had dreams of some lover;
one (but she was naturally of a credulous turn) believed in a future
husband. All the pupils above fourteen knew of som