urse,
every thing will be explained to the satisfaction of friends
when you appear publicly as the wife of Luke Gregory--'long
secretly married!' You see, it will be necessary to go back a
little to save appearances, on account of Ernie!"

The miscreant! I understood him now--oh, my God, for strength to
tear his cowardly heart from his truculent body! But no; let
there be no further unavailing anger. In God's good time all
should recoil on his own head. For the present, I must bear, and
make myself insensible; if possible; and yet, I would not
willingly have had the living greenness of my spirit turned to
stone, as we are told branches are in some strange, foreign
rivers--crystal-cold!

Another extract, the closing one, and then forever away with
Basil Bainrothe and his flimsy letters:

"Again, I must congratulate you on the subdued and humbled
temper you manifest. Claude, and Evelyn, and I, had just been
discussing a plan for removing you to another asylum, where
stricter discipline and less luxurious externals are employed to
conquer the otherwise unmanageable inmates. Dr. Englehart, you
know, holds up the theory of indulgence to his patients, and I
am rejoiced to find his measures have at last prevailed over
your frenzy. Mabel, like your other friends, believes you dead,
and is at home with Evelyn and Claude, and is growing in beauty
and intelligence every day.

"She was quite shocked at her uncle's wild behavior, and
positively refused to go with him, is fond of Mr. Gregory, and
remembers you with affection.

"Owing to my knowledge of your condition for the last year, my
dear child, I don't blame you for any thing that is past, not
even for those delusions with regard to my own acts and
intentions which formed your mania, nor for the misfortune and
sense of shame which, no doubt, caused your hasty flight, and
whose evidences you brought with you from the raft, in the shape
of a nearly year-old child.

"I remain, faithfully yours,

"B.B."

The shameful accusations which brought the blood to my brow ought to
have been easier to bear than all the rest, because so easily confuted,
and because I knew not really believed; but they were not. The very idea
of shame humiliated me more than positive ill-treatment could have done;
and, spotless though I knew myself to be (a