make its appearance in
your perspective. March speaks with great tenderness and real
compassion for your sufferings. Have you been at Lady Holland's? Are
you in my house? Do not stay too long at Frognal; change the scene;
it will do you good. Gratify every caprice of that sort, and write
to me everything that comes into your head. You cannot unload your
heart to any one who will receive its weight more cheerfully than I
shall do."

But next year we hear of Selwyn at Milan negotiating with Mie Mie's
relatives for her return. His proposals to make settlements on her
met with alternate rebuffs and promises that kept him in a state of
intermingled fear and hope. He was finally put off with the
understanding that she should return to him in the spring; and in
October he turned homeward.

In the spring it was arranged that the Marchesa Fagniani should
bring Mie Mie to Paris to be left a few weeks in a convent before
Selwyn should claim her. The meeting did not take place without a
last trial of patience for him. He arrived in Paris in April,
expecting to find the little traveller, but he was informed that the
departure from Milan had been delayed for a few days; this was
followed by the news of a change of plans, and that Selwyn must go
to Lyons to meet the child, who would be conducted there by her
mother--a meeting Selwyn had wished to avert. Eventually, early in
May, we read the congratulations of his friends on the restoration
of what had become dearest to him in the world.

During the month Selwyn spent in Paris, however, waiting for Mie
Mie, who was passing the specified time in the convent, fresh
difficulties were raised, and he began to doubt if he should ever
bring the little girl to England. His health was seriously affected
by the strain, and his friends begged him to give up a pursuit which
was injuring it and taking him from them; but Mie Mie was at last
received from the convent under a vague condition that at some
future time she should return to it; a half promise which neither
side expected would be fulfilled.

The Rev. Dr. Warner gives us a slight description of Mie Mie. A year
had passed; she is nine years old; he is writing to Selwyn:--

"That freshness of complexion I should have great pleasure in
beholding. It must add to her charms, and cannot diminish the
character, sense, and shrewdness which distinguish her physiognomy,
and which she possesses in a great degree, with a happy engrafting
of a