; but she is very early this year; our season does
not begin yet, you know. She is a great blessing to the place, she
gives so much away to the poor peasants. At first she used to come
with old Mr. Carr, and a wonderful nurse they say she made to the old
gentleman till he died."

"Does she entertain much?"

"Not as a rule, but sometimes she gives great balls, splendid affairs,
and a series of dinner-parties that are the talk of the island. She
hardly ever goes out anywhere, which makes the ladies in the place
angry, but, I believe, that they all go to her balls and dinners.
Mostly, she spends her time up in the hills, collecting butterflies
and beetles. She has got the most wonderful collection of Egyptian
curiosities up at the house there, too, though why she keeps them here
instead of in England, I am sure I don't know. Her husband began the
collection when he was a young man, and collected all his life, and
she has gone on with it since."

"I wonder that she has not married again."

"Well, it can't be for want of asking, if half of what they say is
true; for, according to that, every single gentleman under fifty who
has been at Madeira during the last five years has had a try at her,
but she wouldn't look at one of them. But of course that is gossip--
and here we are at the landing-place. Sit steady, sir; those fellows
will pull the boat up."

Had it not been for the pre-occupied and uncomfortable state of his
mind, that took the flavour out of all that he did, and persistently
thrust a skeleton amidst the flowers of every landscape, Arthur should
by rights have enjoyed himself very much at Madeira.

To live in one of the lofty rooms of "Miles' Hotel," protected by
thick walls and cool, green shutters, to feel that you are enjoying
all the advantages of a warm climate without its drawbacks, and that,
too, however much people in England may be shivering--which they
mostly do all the year round--is in itself a luxury. And so it is, if
the day is hot, to dine chiefly off fish and fruit, and such fruit!
and then to exchange the dining-room for the cool portico, with the
sea-breeze sweeping through it, and, pipe in hand, to sink into a
slumber that even the diabolical shrieks of the parrots, tied by the
leg in a line below, are powerless to disturb. Or, if you be energetic
--I speak of Madeira energy--you may stroll down the little terraced
walk, under the shade of your landlord's vines, and contemplate the
growin