I am pledged to discontinue writing about myself.  But in these private pages I may note the substance of what my good friend said to me.  If I only look back often enough at this little record, I may gather the resolution to profit by her advice.  In brief, these were her words: 

“Stella has spoken to me in confidence, since she met you accidentally in the garden yesterday.  She cannot be guilty of the poor affectation of concealing what you must have already discovered for yourself.  But she prefers to say the words that must be said to you, through me.  Her husband’s conduct to her is an outrage that she can never forget.  She now looks back with sentiments of repulsion, which she dare not describe, to that ‘love at first sight’ (as you call it in England), conceived on the day when they first met—­and she remembers regretfully that other love, of years since, which was love of steadier and slower growth.  To her shame she confesses that she failed to set you the example of duty and self-restraint when you two happened to be alone yesterday.  She leaves it to my discretion to tell you that you must see her for the future, always in the presence of some other person.  Make no reference to this when you next meet; and understand that she has only spoken to me instead of to her mother, because she fears that Mrs. Eyrecourt might use harsh words, and distress you again, as she once distressed you in England.  If you will take my advice, you will ask permission to go away again on your travels.”

It matters nothing what I said in reply.  Let me only relate that we were interrupted by the appearance of the nursemaid at the pavilion door.

She led the child by the hand.  Among his first efforts at speaking, under his mother’s instruction, had been the effort to call me Uncle Bernard.  He had now got as far as the first syllable of my Christian name, and he had come to me to repeat his lesson.  Resting his little hands on my knees, he looked up at me with his mother’s eyes, and said, “Uncle Ber’.”  A trifling incident, but, at that moment, it cut me to the heart.  I could only take the boy in my arms, and look at Madame Villeray.  The good woman felt for me.  I saw tears in her eyes.

No! no more writing about myself.  I close the book again.

Eighth Extract.

July 3.—­A letter has reached Mrs. Eyrecourt this morning, from Doctor Wybrow.  It is dated, “Castel Gandolpho, near Rome.”  Here the doctor is established during the hot months—­and here he has seen Romayne, in attendance on the “Holy Father,” in the famous summer palace of the Popes.  How he obtained the interview Mrs. Eyrecourt is not informed.  To a man of his celebrity, doors are no doubt opened which remain closed to persons less widely known.