s--not Elizabeth--"

"No, surely not; but she is, now that you draw my attention to it,
strikingly like Marie Antoinette."

"She said she would be, and she has succeeded!" and I mused on the
wonderful transition.

Four years more, and we heard of Bertie in England, as the
rarely-gifted and beautiful American reader, "Lavinia La Vigne." Out of
the _repertoire_ of her family names she had fished up this
alliteration, and "Bertie" was reserved for those behind the scenes.

It was declared also in the public sheets, what great and distinguished
men were in her train; how wits bowed to her wit, and authors to her
criticisms! But, when she wrote to me, she said nothing of all this,
only telling of her visit to Mrs. Shelley, who had received her kindly,
and to the tomb of Shakespeare, whose painted effigy she especially
derided. "It looks indeed like a man who would cut his wife off with an
old feather-bed and a teakettle," was one of her characteristic remarks,
I remember; but there was a little postscript that told the whole story
of her life, on a separate scrap of paper meant only for my eye I
clearly saw, and committed instantly to the flames after perusal:

"Ah, Miriam, this is all a magic lantern! The people are phantoms, the
realities are shadows, and I a wretched humbug, duller than all! Two men
have lived and breathed for me on the face of this earth--two only. One
was my much-offending and deeply-suffering father. The other--O, Miriam,
to think of him is crime; but in his life, and that alone, I live. I
send you Praed's last beautiful little song--'Tell him I love him yet.'
It will tell you every thing. An answer I have scribbled to it as if
written by a man. Keep both, and when I am dead, should you survive me,
dear, lay them if you can in my coffin, close, close to my heart!"

Three years more, and Bertie is in Rome, independent, at last, through
her own exertions, and able to gratify her tastes. I receive thence
statues, and pictures, and cameos, all exquisite of their kind, her
princely gifts, her legacies. Then comes a long silence. She knew what
faith was mine when she last abode beneath my roof and made herself a
little impertinently merry at my expense in consequence of this new
order of things.

Now comes a letter (a paper envelope accompanying it)--Bertie La Vigne
has entered the Catholic Church, through baptism and confirmation, so
briefly states the letter written in her own hand and of date some