world. It will be a year at least before we meet again. [_Exit_
Adolphus.

_El_. Poor Adolphus! how absolutely impossible is love, where the hidden
sympathy of soul is wanting!--and yet how nice he is [_sighs_], and how
manfully he accepted his fate! What philosophy can really explain the
mystery of that magnetic affinity called love, which so unaccountably
exercises its attracting influences over the whole animal creation, and
most probably over plants? If it is a latent potentiality of matter, how
did it get there? Now for a scene with mamma.

[_Exit_ Elaine.



SCENE III.--The Countess of Gules's Boudoir. Lady Gules and Lady Elaine
reading. Enter Charles with card and letter.


_El_. [_reading card_]. Mr Adolphus Plumper! Is the gentleman coming up-
stairs, Charles?

_Charles_. No, my lady; he only left the card and this letter, and said
he would call again. [_Exit_ Charles.

_El_. [_opening letter_]. From Mr Gresham, mamma, dated Naples.
[_Reads_.] "DEAR ELAINE,--I felt so much touched by the kindness of your
last words to me when we parted, that I venture to hope that it may
interest you to know, as a friend, how it has fared with me since I left
England. The curative process does not seem to have fairly set in yet,