“No, no; I cannot sell my wedding-dress,” again murmured the wife.  And be it recorded, the temptress, for once, was baffled; but at the expiration of an hour, Madame Dalmas left the house, with a huge bundle under her arm, and a quiet satisfaction revealed in her countenance, had any one thought it worth while to study the expression of her disagreeable face.

Again Lady Lucy locked her door; and placing a bank-note and some sovereigns on the table, she sank into a low chair, and while a few large silent tears flowed down her cheeks, she at last found courage to open the three letters which had hitherto remained unread in her apron pocket.  The first—­the second, seemed to contain nothing to surprise her, however much there might be to annoy—­but it was different with that last:  here was a gross overcharge, and perhaps it was not with quite a disagreeable feeling that Lady Lucy found something of which she could justly complain.  She rose hurriedly and unlocked a small writing-desk, which had long been used as a receptacle for old letters and accounts.

To tell the truth, the interior of the desk did not present a very orderly arrangement.  Cards of address, bills paid and unpaid, copies of verses, and papers of many descriptions, were huddled together, and it was not by any means surprising that Lady Lucy failed in her search for the original account, by which to rectify the error in her shoemaker’s bill.  In the hurry and nervous trepidation which had latterly become almost a constitutional ailment with her, she turned out the contents of the writing-desk into an easy chair, and then kneeling before it, she set herself to the task of carefully examining the papers.  Soon she came to one letter which had been little expected in that place, and which still bore the marks of a rose, whose withered leaves also remained, that had been put away in its folds.  The rose Walter Ferrars had given her on the eve of their marriage, and the letter was in his handwriting, and bore but a few days earlier date.  With quickened pulses she opened the envelope; and though a mist rose before her eyes, it seemed to form into a mirror in which she saw the by-gone hours.  And so she read—­and read.

It is the fashion to laugh at love-letters, perhaps because only the silly ones come to light.  With the noblest of both sexes such effusions are sacred, and would be profaned by the perusal of a third person:  but when a warm and true heart is joined to a manly intellect; when reason sanctions and constancy maintains the choice which has been made, there is little doubt but much of simple, truthful, touching eloquence is often to be found in a “lover’s” letter.  That which the wife now perused with strange and mingled feelings was evidently a reply to some girlish depreciation of herself, and contained these words:—­