dated Baden-baden; and the vein of subdued yet
hopeless melancholy that wandered through its contents, now and then
intertwined strangely with a thread of her old grim humour.

"Do you ever hear from that legal sphinx--Erle Palma? Mamma only now
and then receives epistles fashioned after those once in vogue in
Laconia. (I wonder if even the old toothless gossips in Sparta were
ever laconic?) I am truly sorry for Erle Palma. That beautifully
crystallized quartz heart of his is no doubt being ground between the
upper and nether millstones of his love and his pride; and Hymen
ought to charge him heavy mill-toll. My dear, _have_ you seen Elliott
Roscoe's little tinted-paper poem? Of course his apostrophe to
'violet eyes, overlaced with jet!' will sound quite Tennysonian to a
certain little shy girl, now hiding at Como, and who 'inspired the
strain.' But aside from the pleasant association that links you with
the verses, they are--pardon me, dear--as thin and flavourless
as--well, as the soup dished out at pauper restaurants. You are at
liberty to consider me consumed by envy, green with jealousy, when I
here spitefully record that Elliott's ambitious poem reminds me of M.
de Bonald's biting criticism on Madame de Kruedener: 'I make bold to
declare, with the Bible in my hand, that the poor we shall always
have with us, were it only the poor in intellect.' Coke and Story
will befriend poor Elliott much more effectually than the Muses, who
have most ingloriously snubbed him. Are you really happy, little
snowbird, nestling in the down of mother-love, which--like the
veritable baby you are--you so pined for?

"Regina, I am going to tell you something. Bar the windows, lock the
doors, shut it up for ever, close in your own heart. A few nights
ago, I went with an English friend to the _Conversationshaus_. When
we had leaned awhile against one of the columns, and watched the
dancers in the magnificent saloon, he proposed to show me the grand
gambling-room.

"As we walked slowly along, listening to the click of the gold that
pattered down from trembling hands, I saw, sitting at a _Roulette_
table, deeply immersed in the game (never tell it!) Belmont
Eggleston. Not the same classic, god-like face that I would once have
followed straight to Hades--not the man upon whom I wasted all the
love that God gives a woman to glorify her life and home; but a
flushed, bloated creature, as unlike the Belmont of my hopes and
dreams as 'Hyperi