led on
her at the hotel, and heard she was engaged with her lawyer. On the next
day, she suddenly returned to her old habits, and paid the customary
visit. I observed a similar alteration in her state of feeling. She is
now coldly civil to Helena; and she asks after Eunice with a maternal
interest touching to see--I said to her: "Elizabeth, you appear to have
changed your opinion of the two girls, since I saw you." She answered,
with a delightful candor which reminded me of old times: "Completely!"
I said: "A woman of your intellectual caliber, dear, doesn't change her
mind without a good reason for it." Elizabeth cordially agreed with me.
I ventured to be a little more explicit: "You have no doubt made some
interesting discovery." Elizabeth agreed again; and I ventured again: "I
suppose I may not ask what the discovery is?" "No, Selina, you may not
ask."

This is curious; but it is nothing to what I have got to tell you next.
Just as I was longing to take her to my bosom again as my friend and
confidante, Elizabeth has disappeared. And, alas! alas! there is a
reason for it which no sympathetic person can dispute.

I have just received some overwhelming news, in the form of a neat
parcel, addressed to myself.

There has been a scandal at the hotel. That monster in human form,
Elizabeth's husband, is aware of his wife's professional fame, has
heard of the large sums of money which she earns as the greatest living
professor of massage, has been long on the lookout for her, and
has discovered her at last. He has not only forced his way into her
sitting-room at the hotel; he insists on her living with him again; her
money being the attraction, it is needless to say. If she refuses, he
threatens her with the law, the barbarous law, which, to use his own
coarse expression, will "restore his conjugal rights."

All this I gather from the narrative of my unhappy friend, which forms
one of the two inclosures in her parcel. She has already made her
escape. Ha! the man doesn't live who can circumvent Elizabeth. The
English Court of Law isn't built which can catch her when she roams the
free and glorious Continent.

The vastness of this amazing woman's mind is what I must pause to
admire. In the frightful catastrophe that has befallen her, she can
still think of Philip and Euneece. She is eager to hear of their
marriage, and renounces Helena with her whole heart. "I too was deceived
by that cunning young Woman," she writes. "B