sm CONTENTS. CHAP. XXII. Casimir's Letters to his Father CHAP. XXXVI. Casimir's ill-success in Love XXXVII. Everybody wants to be first PAGE CASIMIR MAREMMA. CHAPTER XXII. HIS LETTERS TO HIS FATHER. ADY ALICE, who had hitherto been somewhat of an indolent fine lady, was, for the moment, metamorphosed into a very industrious young woman. She had not only to assist her lover in his official work, but to attend to her cousin Casimir. Better this, however, than love in idleness. Two idle persons soon exhaust the felicity of courtship. The mere rustic can hardly imagine the enjoyment that hardworked denizens of towns experience in their rare visits to the green fields and hedge-enclosed lanes of the country,-how they rejoice in pleasant country sounds and sights, in the sweet odours of field and flower, and in breathing real, uncontaminated air. So, too, those enjoy love most, who have little or no time to make it. The stolen, hurried kiss, complained of by Lady Alice as interrupting work, was more sweet to Charles Ashurst than would have been whole mornings spent by these two, under some great beech tree, in telling to each other how much they were in love. Count Casimir still continued to write letters to his father, or rather to dictate them to Lady Alice, though he was not sure where that father and was, did not know how these letters were to be sent to him. It was, however, a pleasure and a duty to write them. I cannot do better than give one or two specimens of these letters, for they will show what was passing through the young man's mind, and how, in sickness and disaster, and even partial blindness, he never swerved from that object which had become the main purpose of his life. I select the following letter, because it is |