gs by awakening the past? Suffice it to say that
he whom I loved is dead. We both saw him die, and I received upon my lips
his last breath. Truly if he were Julia's in life, he was mine in death.
Did you never suspect how truly I loved Mr. Wilmot? You were blinded by
your misplaced affection for me, if you did not. Julia, my noble-hearted
sister Julia, knew it all. I confessed my love to her, and on my knees
begged her not to go to him, but to let me take her place at his bedside.
She complied with my request, and then bravely bore in silence the
reproaches of the world for her seeming coldness.

"Dear Julia! She seems strangely changed recently, and you would hardly
know her, she is so gentle, so obliging, so amiable. You ought to have
heard her plead your cause with me. She besought me almost with tears not
to prove unfaithful to you, and when I convinced her that 'twas impossible
for me to love another as I had Mr. Wilmot, she insisted on my writing,
and not keeping you in suspense any longer.

"Dr. Lacey, if you could transfer your affection from me--, but no, why
should I speak of such a thing! You will probably despise all my family.
Yet do not, I beseech you, cast them off for your poor Fanny's sin. They
respect you highly, and Julia would be angry if she knew that I am about
to tell you how she admires a certain Southern friend, who probably, by
this time, thinks with contempt of little

"FANNY MIDDLETON."

There was no perceptible change in Dr. Lacey's manner after reading the
heartless forgery, but the iron had entered his soul, and for a time he
seemed benumbed with its force. Then came a moment of reflection. His love
had been trampled upon, and thrown back as a thing of naught by her who
had fallen from the high pedestal on which he had enthroned the idol of
his heart's deepest affection.

"I could have pitied, and admired her, too," thought he, "had she candidly
confessed her love for Mr. Wilmot; but to be so basely deceived by one
whom I thought incapable of deception is too much."

Seizing the letter, he again read it through, and this time he felt his
wounded pride somewhat soothed by thinking that the beautiful Julia
admired and sympathized with him. "But pshaw!" he exclaimed, "most likely
Julia is as hollow-hearted as her sister, and yet many dark spots on her
character seem wiped away by Fanny's confession." Throwing the letter
aside he