cipally about marriage, more especially still about the horrors
of false marriages, and this led me to tell him that the best friend
I have on earth is infamously bound for the whole of her dear life
by a marriage contracted before she was seventeen years old. He
thinks, dearest, with me, that you ought to face the horrors of the
divorce court rather than linger on in chains, and certainly listen
no longer to the considerations, pecuniary and otherwise, which
influence your mother.

I fancy, from the way in which he spoke, that his father and mother
were not happy together; he has therefore not had in his life the
blessing that was mine,--the daily contemplation of an absolutely
perfect union. Indeed, he hardly seems to believe in the possibility
of ideal marriages, and declares that he himself will certainly
never marry unless some law is passed whereby men and women shall be
able to bind themselves for a limited number of years, at the
expiration of which they may either renew the bond or go free. I
laughed when he said this, for I thought he was jesting; so he was,
partly, yet more than half in earnest.

"No, no," said he; "I shall never marry. I had sooner not break the
laws of my country, but if it came to be a question between breaking
them or the laws of true morality, I should not hesitate in my
choice. Love without marriage is a sin against society; marriage
without love is a sin against Nature."

Of course he is right. How my mother would have loved him! Do you
remember her invectives against marriage? It was the very perfection
of the tie between her and my father that filled her with
indignation and regret whenever she looked about her and beheld, on
all sides, the parody of her heaven.

Good-bye. You are getting very lazy, Mrs. Norris. How dare you leave
me letterless so long?

Write directly you get this to

Your loving
EMILIA.

LETTER XVII.

GRAYSMILL, November 21st.

For the first time in my life, I have been a little cross with you,
Constance of my heart. My anger did not last long, but even when it
was practically at an end I felt obliged to play at being cross with
you, and therefore would not write. But to-day comes another sweet
letter from you, and I am miserable to think you should have had to
write a second time before getting an answer to yo