en and dispatched.

And indeed it was matter for the gravest reflection. To accede to this
important request was to yield up all control over the dear young girl
whose affection had constituted the brightness of this somewhat
disappointed life, while to refuse an offer made with such evident love
and anxiety, was to bring a pang of regret to a heart she hesitated to
wound. The question of advantage which might have swayed others in their
decision, did not in the least affect Miss Belinda. Now that Paula had
seen the world and gained an insight into certain studies beyond the
reach of her own attainments, any wishes in which she might have
indulged on that score were satisfied, and mere wealth with its
concomitant of luxuriant living, she regarded with distrust, and rather
in the light of a stumbling-block to the great and grand end of all
existence.

Suddenly with that energy which characterized all her movements, she
rose from her seat, and first casting a look of somewhat cautious
inquiry at the recumbent figure of her sister, asleep in the heavy old
fashioned bed that occupied one corner of the room, she proceeded to a
bureau drawer and took out a small box which she unlocked on the table.
It was full of letters; those same honest epistles, which, as empowered
by Mr. Sylvester, she had requested Paula to send her from week to week.
Some of them were a year old, but she read them all carefully through,
while the clock ticked on the shelf and the wind soughed in the chimney.
Certain passages she marked, and when she had finished the pile, she
took up the letters again and re-read those passages. They were
necessarily desultory in their character, but they all had, in her mind
at least, a bearing upon the question on hand, and as such, I give them
to my readers.

* * * * *

"O aunty, I have made a friend, a sweet girl friend who I have reason to
hope will henceforth be to me as my other eye and hand. Her name is
Stuyvesant--a name by the way that always calls up a certain complacent
smile on Cousin Ona's countenance--and she is the daughter of one of the
directors of Mr. Sylvester's bank. I met her in a rather curious way.
For some reason Ona had expressed a wish for me to ride horseback. She
is rather too large for the exercise herself, but thought it looked
well, she said, to see a lady and groom ride from the front of the
house; moreover it would keep me in color by establishing my