er_. If you can suggest to me any means of overcoming
the objection she seems to entertain to our plan, do so; and if you
cannot, please to hold your peace on this matter ever after. I wrote
yesterday to Mark, who is now at Milan, to make some inquiries about
Italian villa life. I was really afraid to speak to your friend Skeff,
lest, as mamma said, he should immediately offer us one of the royal
palaces as a residence. No matter, he is a dear good fellow, and I have
an unbounded reliance on his generosity.

"Not, a word about yourself. Why are you at Brussels? Why are you a
fixed star, after telling us you were engaged as a planet? Are there any
mysterious reasons for your residence there? If so, I don't ask to hear
them; but your mother naturally would like to know something about you
a little more explanatory than your last bulletin, that said, 'I am here
still, and likely to be so.'

"I had a most amusing letter from Mr. Maitland a few days ago. I had put
it into this envelope to let you read it, but I took it out again, as I
remembered your great and very unjust prejudices against him. He seems
to know every one and everything, and is just as familiar with the great
events of politics as with the great people who mould them. I read
for your mother his description of the life at Fontainebleau, and the
eccentricities of a beautiful Italian Countess Castagnolo, the reigning
belle there; and she was much amused, though she owned that four changes
of raiment daily was too much even for Delilah herself.

"Do put a little coercion on yourself, and write me even a note. I
assure you I would write you most pleasant little letters if you showed
you merited them. I have a budget of small gossip about the neighbors,
no particle of which shall you ever see till you deserve better of your
old friend,

"Alice Trafford."

It may be imagined that it was in a very varying tone of mind he
read through this letter. If Dolly's refusal was not based on her
unwillingness to leave her father,--and if it were, she could have said
so,--it was quite inexplicable. Of all the girls he had ever known, he
never saw one more likely to be captivated by such an offer. She had
that sort of nature that likes to invest each event of life with a
certain romance; and where could anything have opened such a vista for
castle-building as this scheme of foreign travel? Of course he could not
explain it; how should he? Dolly was only partly like what