responded to my passion, though, at the time, I was nearly one-third
of her age--she being five-and-twenty. She was a dark and lively
beauty, thoroughly self-possessed, and versed in social
accomplishments, and gifted with dramatic talent. She afterwards made
a great impression in the court of the Portuguese monarch, and more
than once the King himself chose her as his partner in the ball.
Reports of these gayeties came to my ears; and I found the other day
part of a letter which I addressed to her, remonstrating against these
royal flirtations. It is written in pencil, upon the blue office-paper
of the consulate, and I can recall distinctly the small, indignant boy
and knight-errant, sitting at the desk opposite his hugely diverted
father, and beginning his epistle thus: "Lovely, but reprehensible
Madham!" I suspect that I consulted my father as to the spelling of
the second adjective, for it shows signs of having been overhauled;
but after that my feelings became too strong for me, and the remainder
of the letter is orthographically so eccentric that it was probably
cast aside and a copy made of it. But the rough draught, by some
inconceivable chance, was kept, and turns up now, after half a
century, with a strange thread of pathos woven by time into the
texture of its absurdity. Poor, little, lovely reprehensible Madham!
Her after-career was not a happy one.

These agreeable persons filled our stuccoed villa full, and gave
poignant addition to the quiet, gray beauty of that English spring. A
year or so later, when my mother's health compelled her to escape to a
warmer climate from fog-ridden Liverpool, she went with my sisters to
Lisbon, where the O'Sullivans were by that time established, and spent
several months with them, and saw all the splendors of the naive but
brilliant little court of Dom Pedro V. She brought home a portfolio of
etchings presented to her, and done by his youthful Majesty; which