It was
strangely familiar to her love, after so many years, to be brought into
thus much contact with him. She wrote a short note to Mr. Brown, in
which she requested him to say, as though from himself; and without any
mention of her name, that he, as executor, requested Mr. Corbet's
acceptance of the _Virgil_, as a remembrance of his former friend and
tutor. Then she rang the bell, and gave the letter and parcel to the
servant.
Again alone, and Mr. Corbet's open letter on the table. She took it up
and looked at it till the letters dazzled crimson on the white paper. Her
life rolled backwards, and she was a girl again. At last she roused
herself; but instead of destroying the note--it was long years since all
her love-letters from him had been returned to the writer--she unlocked
her little writing-case again, and placed this letter carefully down at
the bottom, among the dead rose-leaves which embalmed the note from her
father, found after his death under his pillow, the little golden curl of
her sister's, the half-finished sewing of her mother.
The shabby writing-case itself was given her by her father long ago, and
had since been taken with her everywhere. To be sure, her changes of
place had been but few; but if she had gone to Nova Zembla, the sight of
that little leather box on awaking from her first sleep, would have given
her a sense of home.
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