recalled the name as being one he had seen attached to some very
promising pieces; that he was glad to gain Mr. Ivy's acquaintance by
letter, and should certainly look with much interest for his productions
in the future.

There must have been something juvenile or timid in her own epistle, as
one ostensibly coming from a man, she declared to herself; for Trewe
quite adopted the tone of an elder and superior in this reply. But what
did it matter? he had replied; he had written to her with his own hand
from that very room she knew so well, for he was now back again in his
quarters.

The correspondence thus begun was continued for two months or more, Ella
Marchmill sending him from time to time some that she considered to be
the best of her pieces, which he very kindly accepted, though he did not
say he sedulously read them, nor did he send her any of his own in
return. Ella would have been more hurt at this than she was if she had
not known that Trewe laboured under the impression that she was one of
his own sex.

Yet the situation was unsatisfactory. A flattering little voice told her
that, were he only to see her, matters would be otherwise. No doubt she
would have helped on this by making a frank confession of womanhood, to
begin with, if something had not happened, to her delight, to render it
unnecessary. A friend of her husband's, the editor of the most important
newspaper in the city and county, who was dining with them one day,
observed during their conversation about the poet that his (the editor's)
brother the landscape-painter was a friend of Mr. Trewe's, and that the
two men were at that very moment in Wales together.