In consequence of the artist's announcement, she wrote to her friend Rosamund, saying how glad she was to hear that her marriage approached.

The reply to this letter surprised her.
Rosamund had been remiss in correspondence for the last few months; her few and brief letters, though they were as affectionate as ever, making no mention of what had formerly been an inexhaustible topic--the genius, goodness, and brilliant hopes of Franks.

Now she wrote as if in utter despondency, a letter so confused in style and vague in expression, that Bertha could gather from it little or nothing except a grave doubt whether Franks' marriage was as near as he supposed.

A week or two passed, and Rosamund again wrote--from Switzerland; again the letter was an unintelligible maze of dreary words, and a mere moaning and sighing, which puzzled Bertha as much as it distressed her.
Rosamund's epistolary style, when she wrote to this bosom friend, was always pitched in a key of lyrical emotion, which now and then would have been trying to Bertha's sense of humour but for the sincerity manifest in every word; hitherto, however, she had expressed herself with perfect lucidity, and this sudden change seemed ominous of alarming things.

Just when Bertha was anxiously wondering what could have happened,--of course inclined to attribute blame, if blame there were, to the artist rather than to his betrothed--a stranger came to inquire about the house to let.