kind. There was something in her mild, expressive eyes, that I
translated thus:--

"Thank God that another hand than Ernest's has stolen the rose from thy
cheek of youth. Better, far better to be humbled by a father's crimes,
than blighted by a husband's jealousy."

This evening reminded me so much of the first I ever passed with Ernest.
He asked Edith for the music of her harp; and I sat in the recess of the
window, in the shadow of the curtains, through whose transparent drapery
the moonbeams stole in and kissed my brow. Ernest came and sat down
beside me, and my hand was clasped in his. As the sweet strains floated
round us, they seemed to mingle with the moonlight, and my spirit was
borne up on waves of brightness and melody. Always before, when
listening to Edith's angelic voice, I had wished for the same enchanting
power. I had felt that thus I could sing, I could play, had art
developed the gifts of nature, only with deeper passion and sensibility;
but now I listened without conscious desire,--passive, happy, willing to
receive, without desiring to impart. I felt like the pilgrim who, after
a sultry day of weariness, pauses by a cool spring, and, laying himself
down beneath its gushing, suffers the stream to flow over him,--till,
penetrated by their freshness, his soul seems a fountain of living
waters. Oh! the divine rapture of repose, after restlessness and
conflict! I had passed the breakers. Henceforth my life would be calm
and placid as the beams that illumined the night.

And now I am tempted to lay down the pen. I would not weary thee, friend
of my lonely hours, whoever thou art, by a repetition of scenes which
show how poor and weak are the strongest human resolutions, when
temptations assail and passions rise with the swell and the might of the
stormy billows. But if I record weaknesses and errors, such as seldom
sadden the annals of domestic life, it is that God may be glorified in
the humiliation of man. It is that the light of the sun of righteousness
may be seen to arise with healing in his beams, while the mists of error
and the clouds of passion are left rolling below.

Yes! We were all happy for a while, and in the midst of such pure,
reviving influences, I became blooming and elastic as a mountain maid.
Dr. Harlowe was the same kind, genial, warm-hearted friend. Mr. Regulus,
the same--no, he was changed,--improved, softened still more than when
he surprised me by his graces, in my metropolita