aze, and with them her poet's home. Heavy-
hearted, she tried to read, and wept instead.

Mr. Marchmill was in a thriving way of business, and he and his family
lived in a large new house, which stood in rather extensive grounds a few
miles outside the city wherein he carried on his trade. Ella's life was
lonely here, as the suburban life is apt to be, particularly at certain
seasons; and she had ample time to indulge her taste for lyric and
elegiac composition. She had hardly got back when she encountered a
piece by Robert Trewe in the new number of her favourite magazine, which
must have been written almost immediately before her visit to Solentsea,
for it contained the very couplet she had seen pencilled on the wallpaper
by the bed, and Mrs. Hooper had declared to be recent. Ella could resist
no longer, but seizing a pen impulsively, wrote to him as a brother-poet,
using the name of John Ivy, congratulating him in her letter on his
triumphant executions in metre and rhythm of thoughts that moved his
soul, as compared with her own brow-beaten efforts in the same pathetic
trade.

To this address there came a response in a few days, little as she had
dared to hope for it--a civil and brief note, in which the young poet
stated that, though he was not well acquainted with Mr. Ivy's verse, he
recalled the name as being one he had seen attached to some very
promising pieces; that he was glad to gain Mr. Ivy's acquaintance by
letter, and should certainly look with much interest for his productions
in the future.

There must have been something juvenile or timid in her own epistle, as
one ostensibly coming from a man, she declared to herself; for Trewe
quite adopted the tone of an elder and superior in this reply. But what
did it matter? he had replied; he had written to her with his own hand
from that very room she knew so well, for he was now back again in his
quarters.

The correspondence thus begun was continued for two months or more, Ella
Marchmill sending him from time to time some that she considered to be
the best of her pieces, which he very kindly accepted, though he did not
say he sedulously read them, nor did he send her any of his own in
return. Ella would have been more hurt at this than she was if she had
not known that Trewe laboured under the impression that she was one of
his own sex.

Yet the situation was unsatisfactory. A flattering little voice told her
that, were he only to see her, matter