text:  She evidently enjoyed the display of her skill in tormenting: every second letter was almost a declaration of breaking off the correspondence altogether; or what was even worse mingled with those menaces there were from time to time allusions to my opinions and quotations of my chance remarks which rather to my surprise showed me that the proverb "_Les absens ont toujours tort_ " was true in more senses than one and that the Frenchman occasionally lost ground by being fifty miles off