d. To more than
this, to the happiness which some women enjoy, I must not, I dare not,
aspire.

"We leave England for the Continent early tomorrow morning. Shall I tell
you in what part of Europe my new residence is to be?

"No! You might write to me again; and I might write back. The one poor
return I can make to the good angel of my life is to help him to forget
me. What right have I to cling to my usurped place in your regard? The
time will come when you will give your heart to a woman who is worthier
of it than I am. Let me drop out of your life--except as an occasional
remembrance, when you sometimes think of the days that have gone
forever.

"I shall not be without some consolation on my side, when I too look
back at the past. I have been a better woman since I met with you. Live
as long as I may, I shall always remember that.

"Yes! The influence that you have had over me has been from first to
last an influence for good. Allowing that I have done wrong (in my
position) to love you, and, worse even than that, to own it, still the
love has been innocent, and the effort to control it has been an honest
effort at least. But, apart from this, my heart tells me that I am the
better for the sympathy which has united us. I may confess to you what
I have never yet acknowledged--now that we are so widely parted, and
so little likely to meet again--whenever I have given myself up
unrestrainedly to my own better impulses, they have always seemed to
lead me to you. Whenever my mind has been most truly at peace, and I
have been able to pray with a pure and a penitent heart, I have felt
as if there was some unseen tie that was drawing us nearer and nearer
together. And, strange to say, this has always happened (just as my
dreams of you have always come to me) when I have been separated from
Van Brandt. At such times, thinking or dreaming, it has always appeared
to me that I knew you far more familiarly than I know you when we meet
face to face. Is there really such a thing, I wonder, as a former state
of existence? And were we once constant companions in some other sphere,
thousands of years since? These are idle guesses. Let it be enough for
me to remember that I have been the better for knowing you--without
inquiring how or why.

"Farewell, my beloved benefactor, my only friend! The child sends you a
kiss; and the mother signs herself your grateful and affectionate

"M. VAN BRANDT."

When I first read those lines,