He dreaded however the pain of parting with the child, and when the day of her departure arrived he absented himself to avoid the farewell, and his spirits and health suffered from her loss.  Two months later Carlisle writes, “I never thought your attachment extraordinary.  I might, for your sake, have wished it less in the degree; but what I did think extraordinary was that you would never permit what was most likely to happen ever to make its appearance in your perspective.  March speaks with great tenderness and real compassion for your sufferings.  Have you been at Lady Holland’s?  Are you in my house?  Do not stay too long at Frognal; change the scene; it will do you good.  Gratify every caprice of that sort, and write to me everything that comes into your head.  You cannot unload your heart to any one who will receive its weight more cheerfully than I shall do.”

But next year we hear of Selwyn at Milan negotiating with Mie Mie’s relatives for her return.  His proposals to make settlements on her met with alternate rebuffs and promises that kept him in a state of intermingled fear and hope.  He was finally put off with the understanding that she should return to him in the spring; and in October he turned homeward.

In the spring it was arranged that the Marchesa Fagniani should bring Mie Mie to Paris to be left a few weeks in a convent before Selwyn should claim her.  The meeting did not take place without a last trial of patience for him.  He arrived in Paris in April, expecting to find the little traveller, but he was informed that the departure from Milan had been delayed for a few days; this was followed by the news of a change of plans, and that Selwyn must go to Lyons to meet the child, who would be conducted there by her mother—­a meeting Selwyn had wished to avert.  Eventually, early in May, we read the congratulations of his friends on the restoration of what had become dearest to him in the world.

During the month Selwyn spent in Paris, however, waiting for Mie Mie, who was passing the specified time in the convent, fresh difficulties were raised, and he began to doubt if he should ever bring the little girl to England.  His health was seriously affected by the strain, and his friends begged him to give up a pursuit which was injuring it and taking him from them; but Mie Mie was at last received from the convent under a vague condition that at some future time she should return to it; a half promise which neither side expected would be fulfilled.

The Rev. Dr. Warner gives us a slight description of Mie Mie.  A year had passed; she is nine years old; he is writing to Selwyn:—­

“That freshness of complexion I should have great pleasure in beholding.  It must add to her charms, and cannot diminish the character, sense, and shrewdness which distinguish her physiognomy, and which she possesses in a great degree, with a happy engrafting of a high-bred foreign air upon an English stock . . .