een
adopted by sixty nuns who inhabit the convent over the way, and sell
us the most delicious butter and cream. Imagine, if she were a trifle
older, her mother would hardly view the proceedings of those dear
berosaried women with so much equanimity.'

'As for Rose, she writes more letters than Clarissa, and receives more
than an editor of the "Times." I have the strongest views, as you know,
as to the vanity of letter-writing. There was a time when you shared
them, but there are circumstances and conjunctures, alas! in which no
man can be sure of his friend or his friend's principles. Kind friend,
good fellow, go often to Elgood Street. Tell me everything about
everybody. It is possible, after all, that I may live to come back to
them.'

But a week later, alas! the letters fell into a very different strain.
The weather had changed, had turned indeed damp and rainy, the natives
of course declaring that such gloom and storm in January had never been
known before. Edmondson wrote in discouragement. Elsmere had had a touch
of cold, had been confined to bed, and almost speechless. His letter was
full of medical detail, from which Flaxman gathered that in spite of the
rally of the first ten days, it was clear that the disease was attacking
constantly fresh tissue. 'He is very depressed too,' said Edmondson;
'I have never seen him so yet. He sits and looks at us in the evening
sometimes with eyes that wring one's heart. It is as though, after
having for a moment allowed himself to hope, he found it a doubly hard
task to submit.'

Ah, that depression! It was the last eclipse through which a radiant
soul was called to pass; but while it lasted it was black indeed. The
implacable reality, obscured at first by the emotion and excitement
of farewells, and then by a brief spring of hope and returning vigor,
showed itself now in all its stern nakedness--sat down, as it were, eye
to eye with Elsmere--immovable, ineluctable. There were certain features
of the disease itself which were specially trying to such a nature. The
long silences it enforced were so unlike him, seemed already to withdraw
him so pitifully from their yearning grasp! In these dark days he would
sit crouching over the wood-fire in the little _salon_, or lie drawn to
the window looking out on the rainstorms bowing the ilexes or scattering
the meshes of clematis, silent, almost always gentle, but turning
sometimes on Catherine, or on Mary playing at his feet, eyes