MYDEAREST BARBARA ALEXIEVNA,--How happy I was last night--how immeasurably, how impossibly happy!

From you, mydearest dead ones, cometh unto me a sweet savour, heart- opening and melting.

Dearest,dearest Meg,--I do not know what you will say: Paul and I are in love--the younger son who only came here Wednesday.

However, you have been a good, good boy, and you are the best of all thedearest boys that ever were, this morning, and here's the chain I have made of it, Pa, and you must let me put it round your neck with my own loving hands.'

"Tell it if you wish to,dearest. This precious history then.

"Mydearest wish is the success of Berande," Joan had just said, apropos of a discussion about the cheapening of freights on copra to market.

The king's son ascended, but instead of finding hisdearest Rapunzel, he found the enchantress, who gazed at him with wicked and venomous looks.

'Do you remember that I tried to tell you, when I came home, what a debt of gratitude I owed you,dearest Agnes, and how fervently I felt towards you?'

No,dearest Georgiana, you came so nearly perfect from the hand of Nature that this slightest possible defect, which we hesitate whether to term a defect or a beauty, shocks me, as being the visible mark of earthly imperfection."

The next was in these words: "I do not pretend to regret anything I shall leave in Hertfordshire, except your society, mydearest friend; but we will hope, at some future period, to enjoy many returns of that delightful intercourse we have known, and in the meanwhile may lessen the pain of separation by a very frequent and most unreserved correspondence.

"Yes,dearest,dearest grand-mamma, thou know'st I will."

They met by appointment; and as Isabella had arrived nearly five minutes before her friend, her first address naturally was, "Mydearest creature, what can have made you so late?