sin must be a
great virtue if it has grown to be big enough, you see. There! How
sagacious of me! You didn't know what a philosopher you had in the
family, did you, my dears?

"It is to be on the 24th of May. That will be the Queen's birthday over
again; and when I think of all that has happened since the last one I
feel as romantic as a schoolgirl and as sentimental as a nursery maid.
Naturally I am in a fearful flurry over the whole affair, and, to tell
the truth, I have hied me to the weird sisters on the subject--that is to
say, I have been to a fortune-teller, and spent a 'goolden'
half-sovereign on the creature at one fell swoop. But she predicts
wonderful things for me, so I am satisfied. The newspapers are to blaze
with my name; I am to have a dazzling success and become the idol of the
hour--all of which is delightful and entrancing, and quite reasonable at
the money. Grandfather will reprove me for tempting Providence, and, of
course, John Storm, if he knew it, would say that I shouldn't do such
things under any circumstances; yet to tell me I oughtn't to do this and
I oughtn't to do that is like saying I oughtn't to have red hair and I
oughtn't to catch the measles. I can't help it! I can't help it! so
what's the good of breaking one's heart about it?

"But I hadn't got to wait for _Hecate et cie_ for what related to the
newspapers. You must know, dear Aunt Rachel, that I _did_ meet Mr. Drake
at the house of the Home Secretary, and he introduced me to a Miss Rosa
Macquarrie, who is no longer very young or beautiful, but a dear for all
that! and she, being a journalist, has bruited my praises abroad, with
the result that all the world is ringing with my virtues. Listen, all men
and women, while I sound mine own glory out of a column as long as the
Duke of York's:

"'She is young and tall, and has auburn hair' (always thought it was red
myself) 'and large gray eyes, one of which seems at a distance to be
brown' (it squints), 'giving an effect of humour and coquetry and power
rarely, if ever, seen in any other face.... Her voice has startling
varieties of tone, being at one moment soft, cooing, and liquid, and at
another wild, weird, and plaintive; and her face, which is not strictly
beautiful' (oh!), 'but striking and unforgetable, has an extraordinary
range of expression.... She sings, recites, speaks, laughs, and cries
(literally), and some of her selections are given in a sort of Irish
_patois_' (oh, my b