DEAR SIR,—Miss Lusignan has written to me somewhat impatiently and seems disposed to dispense with my visits. I do not, however, think it right to withdraw without telling you candidly that this is an unwise step. Your daughter's health is in a very precarious condition.
Yours, etc.
Rosa burst out laughing. “I have nothing to fear, and I'm on the brink of the grave. That comes of writing without a consultation. If they had written at one table, I should have been neither well nor ill. Poor Christopher!” and her sweet face began to work piteously.
“There! there! drink a glass of wine.”
She did, and a tear with it, that ran into the glass like lightning.
Warned by this that grief sat very near the bright, hilarious surface, Mr. Lusignan avoided all emotional subjects for the present. Next day, however, he told her she might dismiss her lover, but no power should make him dismiss his pet physician, unless her health improved.
“I will not give you that excuse for inflicting him on me again,” said the young hypocrite.
She kept her word. She got better and better, stronger, brighter, gayer.
She took to walking every day, and increasing the distance, till she could walk ten miles without fatigue.
Her favorite walk was to a certain cliff that commanded a noble view of the sea. To get to it she must pass through the town of Gravesend; and we may be sure she did not pass so often through that city without some idea of meeting the lover she had used so ill, and eliciting an APOLOGY from him. Sly puss!