ad at first fancied Arthur was the object of
her niece's regard, but this idea was not strengthened, and though she
felt assured such was not the real cause of Ellen's agitation that
eventful evening, she could not, and did not guess the truth.

The revealing a long-treasured secret, the laying bare feelings of the
heart, which have so long been concealed, even to our dearest friends,
does not always produce happiness; there is a blank within us, a
yearning after something we know not what, and the spirit loses for a
time its elasticity. It may be that the treasured secret has been so
long enshrined in our innermost souls, we have felt it so long as only
our own, that when we betray it to others, it is as if we parted from a
friend; it is no longer our own, we can no longer hold sweet communion
with it, for the voice of the world hath also reached it, and though at
first its revealing is joy, it is followed by a sorrow. So Herbert felt,
when the excitement of congratulation, of the warm sympathy of his
friends had given place to solicitude and thought. Mary had been so
long the shrine of his secret, fondest thoughts, he had so long indulged
in delicious fancies, known to few others save himself, that now they
had been intruded on even by the voice of gratulation, they would no
longer throng around. It was strange that on this night, when his choice
had been so warmly approved of by all his friends, when words of such
heartfelt kindness had been lavished in his ear, that the same dull
foreboding of future evil, of suffering, of death, pressed heavily on
him, as in earlier years it had been so wont to do. He struggled against
it; he would not listen to its voice, but it would have sway. Donned it
was not indeed, but from its mystery more saddening. Herbert wrestled
with himself in fervent prayer; that night was to him almost as
sleepless as it was to his cousin Ellen, but the cause of her weary
watching was, alas! too well defined. The bright sun, the joyous voices
of his brother and cousin beneath his window, roused Herbert from these
thoughts, and ere the day had passed, he had partly recovered the usual
tenor of his mind, though its buoyancy was still subdued, and its secret
temperament somewhat sad, but to his family he seemed as usual.

CHAPTER VI.

Some weeks passed, and Emmeline's health was rapidly returning; her
spirits were more like those of her girlhood, subdued indeed by past
suffering, but only so