in a low murmur, "His manner
was changed."

Accordingly, Mrs. Morley sat down and wrote the following letter:

"DEAR MR. VANE,--I am very angry indeed with you for refusing my
invitation--I had so counted on you, and I don't believe a word of your
excuse. Engagements! To balls and dinners, I suppose, as if you were not
much too clever to care about such silly attempts to enjoy solitude in
crowds. And as to what you men call business, you have no right to have
any business at all. You are not in commerce; you are not in Parliament;
you told me yourself that you had no great landed estates to give you
trouble; you are rich, without any necessity to take pains to remain
rich, or to become richer; you have no business in the world except to
please yourself: and when you will not come to Paris to see one of your
truest friends--which I certainly am--it simply means, that no matter
how such a visit would please me, it does not please yourself. I call
that abominably rude and ungrateful.

"But I am not writing merely to scold you. I have something else on my
mind, and it must come out. Certainly, when you were at Paris last year
you did admire, above all other young ladies, Isaura Cicogna. And I
honoured you for doing so. I know no other young lady to be called her
equal. Well, if you admired her then, what would you do now if you
met her? Then she was but a girl--very brilliant, very charming, it is
true--but undeveloped, untested. Now she is a woman, a princess among
women, but retaining all that is most lovable in a girl; so courted, yet
so simple--so gifted, yet so innocent. Her head is not a bit turned
by all the flattery that surrounds her. Come and judge for yourself. I
still hold the door of the rooms destined to you open for repentance.

"My dear Mr. Vane, do not think me a silly match-making little woman,
when I write to you thus, a coeur ouvert.

"I like you so much that I would fain secure to you the rarest prize
which life is ever likely to offer to your ambition. Where can you hope
to find another Isaura? Among the stateliest daughters of your English
dukes, where is there one whom a proud man would be more proud to show
to the world, saying, 'She is mine!' where one more distinguished--I
will not say by mere beauty, there she might be eclipsed--but by
sweetness and dignity combined--in aspect, manner, every movement, every
smile?

"And you, who are yourself so clever, so well read--you who would be so
lo