know that naught you could bestow, can ever equal the world of
love and feeling which I long to lavish upon you from my heart
of hearts. But if another has already won upon your affections
too much for you to give an undivided response to my appeal,
then by all the purity and innocence of your nature, forget I
have ever marred the past or disturbed the present by any word
warmer than that of a father.

"I shall not meet you at breakfast and possibly not at dinner
to-morrow, but when evening comes I shall look for my soul's
dearer and better half, or my childless manhood's nearest and
most cherished friend, as God pleaseth and your own heart and
conscience shall decree.

"EDWARD SYLVESTER."

Miss Belinda was very much surprised to be awakened early the next
morning, by a pair of loving arms clasped yearningly about her neck.

Looking up, she descried Paula kneeling beside her bed in the faint
morning light, her cheeks burning, and her eyelids drooping; and
guessing perhaps how it was, started up from her recumbent position with
an energy strongly suggestive of the charger, that smells the battle
afar off.

"What has happened?" she asked. "You look as if you had not slept a
wink."

For reply Paula pulled aside the curtain at the head of her bed, and
slipped into her hand Mr. Ensign's letter. Miss Belinda read it
conscientiously through, with many grunts of approval, and having
finished it, laid it down with a significant nod, after which she turned
and surveyed Paula with keen but cautious scrutiny. "And you don't know
what answer to give," she asked.

"I should," said Paula, "if--Oh aunt, you know what stands in my way! I
have seen it in your eyes for some time. There is some one else--"

"But he has not spoken?" vigorously ejaculated her aunt.

Without answering, Paula put into her hand, with a slow reluctance she
had not manifested before, a second little note, and then hid her head
amid the bedclothes, waiting with quickly beating heart for what her
aunt might say.

She did not seem in haste to speak, but when she did, her words came
with a quick sigh that echoed very drearily in the young girl's anxious
ears. "You have been placed by this in a somewhat painful position. I
sympathize with you, my child. It is very hard to give denial to a
benefactor."

Paula's head drew nearer to her aunt's breast, her arms crept round her
neck. "But mus