musical resonance of tone, fell with such enchantment on the ear,
that I should have liked to put a book of poetry into her hand,
and to have heard her read it in summer-time, accompanied by
the music of a rocky stream.

The object of her visit--so far as she explained it at
the outset--appeared to be to offer her congratulations on
my recovery, and to tell me that her husband had assumed
the charge of a church in a large town not far from
her birthplace.

Even those commonplace words were made interesting by
her delicious voice. But however sensitive to sweet sounds
a man may be, there are limits to his capacity for deceiving
himself--especially when he happens to be enlightened by
experience of humanity within the walls of a prison. I had,
it may be remembered, already doubted the lady's good temper,
judging from her husband's over-wrought description of her
virtues. Her eyes looked at me furtively; and her manner,
gracefully self-possessed as it was, suggested that she had
something of a delicate, or disagreeable, nature to say to me,
and that she was at a loss how to approach the subject so as to
produce the right impression on my mind at the outset. There was
a momentary silence between us. For the sake of saying something,
I asked how she and the Minister liked their new place of
residence.

"Our new place of residence," she answered, "has been made
interesting by a very unexpected event--an event (how shall
I describe it?) which has increased our happiness and enlarged