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ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD 419
" Courage, ma fille, courage, mon enfant! Tenez! Behold
something to console thee!" and Madame takes out of her pocket
a little letter, and gives it to the girl, who at sight of it kisses the
superscription, and then, in an anguish of love, and joy, and grief,
falls on the neck of the kind woman, who consoles her in her misery.
Whose writing is it Charlotte kisses? Can you guess by any
means ? Upon my word, Madame Smolensk, I never recommend
ladies to take daughters to your boarding-house. And I like you
so much, I would not tell of you, but you know the house is shut
up this many a long day. Oh! the years slip away fugacious; and
the grass has grown over graves; and many and many joys and
sorrows have been born and have died since then for Charlotte and
Philip: but that grief aches still in their bosoms at times; and
that sorrow throbs at Charlotte's heart again whenever she looks
at a little yellow letter in her trinket-box: and she says to her
children, "Papa wrote that to me before we were married, my
dears." There are scarcely half-a-dozen words in the little letter, I
believe; and two of them are " for ever."
I could draw a ground-plan of Madame's house in the Champs
Elysées if I liked, for has not Philip shown me the place and
described it to me many times ? In front, and facing the road and
garden, were Madame's room and the salon ; to the back was the
salle-a-manger; and a stair ran up the house (where the dishes
used to be laid during dinner-time, and where Moira and Macgrigor
fingered the meats and puddings). Mrs. General Baynes's rooms
were on the first floor, looking on the Champs Elysées, and into
the garden-court of the house below. And on this day, as the
dinner was necessarily short (owing to unhappy circumstances), and
the gentlemen were left alone glumly drinking their wine or grog,
and Mrs. Baynes had gone upstairs to her own apartment, had
slapped her boys and was looking out of window— was it not provoking
that of all days in the world young Hely should ride up to
the house on his capering mare, with his flower in his button-hole,
with his little varnished toe-tips just touching his stirrups, and
after performing various caracolades and gambadoes in the garden,
kiss his yellow-kidded hand to Mrs. General Baynes at the window,
hope Miss Baynes was quite well, and ask if he might come in and
take a cup of tea ? Charlotte, lying on Madame's bed in the groundfloor
room, heard Mr. Hely's sweet voice asking after her health,
and the crunching of his horse's hoofs on the gravel, and she could
even catch glimpses of that little form as the horse capered about
in the court, though of course he could not see her where she was
lying on the bed with her letter in her hand. Mrs. Baynes at her
window had to wag her withered head from the casement, to groan