But the week passed, and Trewe did not call.

On Saturday morning the remaining members of the Marchmill family
departed from the place which had been productive of so much fervour in
her. The dreary, dreary train; the sun shining in moted beams upon the
hot cushions; the dusty permanent way; the mean rows of wire--these
things were her accompaniment: while out of the window the deep blue sea-
levels disappeared from her gaze, and with them her poet's home. Heavy-
hearted, she tried to read, and wept instead.

Mr. Marchmill was in a thriving way of business, and he and his family
lived in a large new house, which stood in rather extensive grounds a few
miles outside the city wherein he carried on his trade. Ella's life was
lonely here, as the suburban life is apt to be, particularly at certain
seasons; and she had ample time to indulge her taste for lyric and
elegiac composition. She had hardly got back when she encountered a
piece by Robert Trewe in the new number of her favourite magazine, which
must have been written almost immediately before her visit to Solentsea,
for it contained the very couplet she had seen pencilled on the wallpaper
by the bed, and Mrs. Hooper had declared to be recent. Ella could resist
no longer, but seizing a pen impulsively, wrote to him as a brother-poet,
using the name of John Ivy, congratulating him in her letter on his
triumphant executions in metre and rhythm of thoughts that moved his
soul, as compared with her own brow-beaten efforts in the same pathetic
trade.

To this address there came a response in a few days, little as she had
dared to hope for it--a civil and brief note, in which the young poet
stated that, though he was not well acquainted with Mr. Ivy's verse, he