its struggling existence bears
the mark of the early blight on leaf and blossom?

Such was the impression made on my mind by Bertie La Vigne after three
years of separation, and yet she had grown into majestic stature and
into comparative beauty since we parted at Beauseincourt.

Tall, slender, straight as a young palm-tree, with exquisite
extremities, and a face of aristocratic if not Grecian proportions,
there still was wanting in her step, her eye, her smile, that wonderful
_abandon_ that had formed her chief charm in her earlier years.

She had been crystallized, so to speak, by some strange process of
suffering, into a cold and dull propriety, never infringed on save at
times when she found herself alone with me, and when the old
frolic-spirit would for a little time possess her. It was not dead, but
sleeping.

"And what, my dear Bertie," I said, one day, when Mr. Mortimer had
departed, and she came to throw herself down on the sofa in my chamber
and _rest_, "what has reconciled you to the old Parrot, as you used to
call our sublime Shakespeare?"

"Sublime! I shall think you affected, Miriam, if you apply that word
again to that old commonplace. If he were sublime, do you suppose all
the world would read him or go to see his plays? Do reserve that epithet
for Milton, Dante, Tasso, Schiller, and the like inaccessibilities. Yes,
I do revere 'Wallenstein' more than any thing Shakespeare ever
spouted"--in answer to my gently-shaking head--"I should break down over
_Thekla_, I should, indeed."

"Do you think his bed was soft under the war-horses?"--and she waved her
hand--"O God! what a tragedy; what a love!" and she covered her face
with her quivering palm.

"Bertie, you are still too excitable. I am sorry to see it."

"Philosopher, cure thyself."

"Yes, I know that was always a fault of mine."

"That is why you married the man in the iron mask, you know. I could
never have loved that person."

"Describe the man you think you could have loved, Bertie La Vigne."

"Could have loved? That time is past forever, child. 'Frozen, and dead
forever,' as Shelley says. _He_ was my affinity, I believe, only he died
before I was born. What a pity! I would rather be his widow than the
wife of any man living."

"_She_ would like to hear that, no doubt, Bertie."

"Well, she may hear it if she chooses when I go to England to read the
old Parrot in the right way, under their very noses, Kembles and all.
I'll let Mrs. S