calling Lewis a Pacha, as he always does. You must
think, my dear, that it isn't pleasant to be treated only like a
Circassian slave, and that one may have something better to do in life
than to twirl jewelled armlets, or to light my lord's _chibouk!_"

She looked all radiant with scorn, as she said this,--her eyes flashing,
and her very forehead crimson. I could see she was remembering long
months and years in that moment of indignant anger. Seeing them with her
eyes, I could not say she was unjust, or that her estrangement was
unnatural.

"Now, then, good friend, good bye! Don't look anxious. Don't fear for
me. I am not happy, but I shall know how to keep myself from misery. You
and your excellent husband have done more for me than you know or think;
and I shall try to keep right."

She left me with this, and we parted from both with a lingering sweet
friendliness that dwells still in our memories.

"It would be horrible to be on these terms, if she loved him," said the
minister, that night, after I had told him of our parting interview.

"Well, she don't, you see. Did she ever?"

"With such mind and heart as she had, I suppose. On the other hand, what
did he marry?"

"Grace and beauty--and promise. Of course, like every man in love, he
took everything good for granted."

"The sweetest flower in my garden," said the minister, "should perfume
no stranger's vase, however, nor dangle at a knave's button-hole."

"Because you would watch it and care for it, water and train it, and
make it doubly your own. But if you did neither?"

"I should deserve my fate," said he, sorrowfully.

XIV.

The first letter we received from Mrs. Lewis was from the North of
Scotland, where the party of three, increased to one much larger, were
making the tour of the Hebrides. I cannot say much for either the
penmanship or the orthography of the letter, which was incorrect as
usual; but the abundant beauty of her descriptions, and the fine sense
she seemed to have of lofty and wild scenery, made her journey a living
picture. All her keen sense of external life was brought into activity,
and she projected on the paper before her groups of people, or groups of
mountains, with a vividness that showed she had only to transfer them
from the retina: they had no need of any additional processes. She made
no remarks on society, or inferences from what she saw in the present to
what had been in the past or might be in the future. It was