ve flown immediately
to my relief? Still, however, he came not. I wrote. He replied. He was
detained by urgent business--but would shortly return. He begged me not
to be impatient--to moderate my transports--to read soothing books--to
drink nothing stronger than Hock--and to bring the consolations of
philosophy to my aid. The fool! if he could not come himself, why, in
the name of every thing rational, could he not have enclosed me a
letter of presentation? I wrote him again, entreating him to forward one
forthwith. My letter was returned by that footman, with the following
endorsement in pencil. The scoundrel had joined his master in the
country:

"Left S---yesterday, for parts unknown--did not say where--or when be
back--so thought best to return letter, knowing your handwriting, and as
how you is always, more or less, in a hurry.

"Yours sincerely,

"STUBBS."

After this, it is needless to say, that I devoted to the infernal
deities both master and valet:--but there was little use in anger, and
no consolation at all in complaint.

But I had yet a resource left, in my constitutional audacity. Hitherto
it had served me well, and I now resolved to make it avail me to the
end. Besides, after the correspondence which had passed between us, what
act of mere informality could I commit, within bounds, that ought to
be regarded as indecorous by Madame Lalande? Since the affair of
the letter, I had been in the habit of watching her house, and thus
discovered that, about twilight, it was her custom to promenade,
attended only by a negro in livery, in a public square overlooked by
her windows. Here, amid the luxuriant and shadowing groves, in the
gray gloom of a sweet midsummer evening, I observed my opportunity and
accosted her.

The better to deceive the servant in attendance, I did this with the
assured air of an old and familiar acquaintance. With a presence of mind
truly Parisian, she took the cue at once, and, to greet me, held out the
most bewitchingly little of hands. The valet at once fell into the
rear, and now, with hearts full to overflowing, we discoursed long and
unreservedly of our love.

As Madame Lalande spoke English even less fluently than she wrote it,
our conversation was necessarily in French. In this sweet tongue, so
adapted to passion, I gave loose to the impetuous enthusiasm of my
nature, and, with all the eloquence I could command, besought her to
consent to an immediate marriage.

At this i