with very partial success. When he was leaving her,
Eleanor drew the letter from her pocket.

"What is this?" said he taking it.

"Only a letter for you."

"From you! The consideration of that must not be postponed." He broke
the seal. "Come, sit down again. I will read it here."

"Not now! Take it home, Macintosh, and read it there. Let it wait so
long."

"Why?"

"Never mind why. Do! Because I ask you."

"I don't believe I can understand it without you beside me," said he
smiling, and drawing the letter from its envelope while he looked at
her.

"But there is everybody here," said Eleanor glancing at another part of
the room where the rest of the family were congregated. "I would rather
you took it home with you."

"It is something that requires serious treatment?"

"Yes."

"You are a wise little thing," said he, "and I will take your advice."
He put the letter in his pocket; then took Eleanor's hand upon his arm
and walked her off to the library. Nobody was there; lamplight and
firelight were warm and bright. Mr. Carlisle placed his charge in an
easy chair by the library table, much to her disappointment; drew
another close beside it, and sat down with his arm over the back of
hers to read the letter. Thus it ran:

"It is right you should know a change which has taken place in me since
the time when I first became known to you. I have changed very much,
though it is a change perhaps which you will not believe in; yet I feel
that it makes me very different from my old self, and alters entirely
my views of almost everything. Life and life's affairs--and aims--do
not look to me as they looked a few months ago; if indeed I could be
said to have taken any view at all of them then. They were little more
than names to me, I believe. They are great realities now.

"I do not know how to tell you in what this change in me consists, for
I doubt you will neither like it nor believe in it. Yet you _must_
believe in it; for I am not the woman I was a little while ago; not the
woman you think me now. If I suffered you to go on as you are, in
ignorance of it, I should be deceiving you. I have opened my eyes to
the fact that this life is not the end of life. I see another
beyond,--much more lasting, unknown, strange, perhaps not very distant.
The thought of it presses upon me like a cloud. I want to be ready for
it--I feel I am not ready--and that before I can be ready, not only my
views but my character must be c