simply a
power of representation, unequalled in its way, and yet more remarkable
to us for what it failed of doing than for what it did.

We could not but perceive two things. One, that she never spoke of
home-ties, or children, or husband: not an allusion to either. The
other, that every hill and every vale, the mounting mist and the resting
shadow, all that gave life and beauty to her every-day pursuits, which
seemed, indeed, all pictorial,--all these were informed and permeated,
as it were, with one influence,--that of Remington. An uncomfortable
sense of this made me say, as I finished the letter,--

"I am sorry for the poor bird!"

"So am I," answered the minister, with a clouded brow; "and the more, as
I think I see the bird is limed."

"How?" I said, with a sort of horrified retreat from the expressed
thought, though the thought itself haunted me.

My husband seemed thinking the matter over, as if to clear it in his own
mind before he spoke again.

"I suppose there is a moral disease, which, through its connection with
a newly awakened and brilliant intellect, does not enervate the whole
character. I mean that this connection of moral weakness with the
intellect gives a fatal strength to the character,--do you take me?"

"Yes, I think so," said I.

"She is lofty, self-poised,--confident in what never yet supported any
one. Pride of character does not keep us from falling. Humility would
help us in that way. Unfortunately, that, too, is often bought dearly. I
mean that this virtue of humbleness, which makes us tender of others and
afraid for ourselves, is at the expense of sorrowful and humiliating
experience."

"You speak as if you feared more for her than I do," said I, struck by
the foreboding look in his face.

"You women judge only by your own hearts, or by solitary instances; and
you forget the inevitable downward course of wrong tendencies. Besides,
she has neither lofty principle nor a strong will. You will think I
mistake here; but I don't mean she has not wilfulness enough. A strong
will generally excludes wilfulness,--and the converse."

This conversation made me nervous.

I had such an intense anxiety for her now, that I could not avoid
expressing it often and strongly in my letters to her. I wondered Lewis
was not more open-eyed. I blamed him for letting her run on so
heedlessly into habits which might compromise her reputation for dignity
and discretion, if no worse. Then I would recal