hat he read more than once through, and then pondered
over anxiously, before he threw them from him like the rest.

The first of the two was expressed thus:--

"I shall bring the dried ferns and the passion flower for your album
with me this evening. You cannot imagine, dearest, how happy and how
vain I feel at having made you as enthusiastic a botanist as I am
myself. Since you have taken an interest in my favorite pursuit, it has
been more exquisitely delightful to me than any words can express. I
believe that I never really knew how to touch tender leaves tenderly
until now, when I gather them with the knowledge that they are all to be
shown to _you,_ and all to be placed in your dear hand.

"Do you know, my own love, I thought I detected an alteration in you
yesterday evening? I never saw you so serious. And then your attention
often wandered; and, besides, you looked at me once or twice quite
strangely, Mary.--I mean strangely, because your color seemed to be
coming and going constantly without any imaginable reason. I really
fancied, as I walked home--and I fancy still--that you had something to
say, and were afraid to say it. Surely, love, you can have no secrets
from me!--But we shall meet to-night, and then you will tell me
everything (will you not?) without reserve. Farewell, dearest, till
seven o'clock."

Mat slowly read the second paragraph of this letter twice over,
abstractedly twisting about his great bristly whiskers between his
finger and thumb. There was evidently something in the few lines
which he was thus poring over, that half saddened, half perplexed him.
Whatever the difficulty was, he gave it up, and went on doggedly to the
next letter, which was an exception to the rest of the collection, for
it had a postmark on it. He had failed to notice this, on looking at the
outside; but he detected directly on glancing at the inside that it was
dated differently from those which had gone before it. Under the day of
the week was written the word "London"--noting which, he began to read
the letter with some appearance of anxiety. It ran thus:

"I write, my dearest love, in the greatest possible agitation and
despair. All the hopes I felt, and expressed to you, that any absence
would not last more than a few days, and that I should not be obliged
to journey farther from Dibbledean than London, have been entirely
frustrated. I am absolutely compelled to go to Germany, and may be away
as long as th