Date: 1890
Now a letter to Isola was as unusual an event as was a visitor.  Save circulars announcing sales conducted on high moral principles, and now and then answers or queries from ladies respecting servants, few letters of any kind were dropped into the Aylott box ; so that when the machine in plush brought her on the silver salver a real letter — a letter in a long envelope, and addressed in a fine, thin, pointed hand — it was an event which made her heart beat and her cheeks flush, as if she had been a school-girl receiving her first secret love-note.  But the flush soon faded, and left her face with an almost scared expression on it, as she continued her reading.