word. Oh, that my noble friend were indeed my father! Yet
tell me, tell me, how can this be? Alas! I feel a sad presentiment
that the bright dream is all an illusion, an error. I never before
remember to have heard the name of Phillip Amory. My sweet, pure,
and gentle Emily has taught me to love all the world; and hatred
and contempt are foreign to her nature, and, I trust, to my own.
Moreover, she has not an enemy in the wide world, never had, or
could have. One might as well war with an angel of heaven as with a
creature so holy and lovely as she.

"Nor bid me think of yourself as a man of sin and crime. It cannot
be. It would be wronging a noble nature to believe it, and I say
again it cannot be. Gladly would I trust myself to repose on the
bosom of such a parent; gladly would I hail the sweet duty of
consoling the sorrows of one so self-sacrificing, so kind, so
generous; whose life has been so freely offered for me, and for
others whose existence was dearer to me than my own. When you took
me in your arms and called me your child, your darling child, I
fancied that the excitement of that dreadful scene had for the
moment disturbed your mind and brain so far as to invest me with a
false identity--perhaps confound my image with that of some loved
and absent one. I now believe that it was no sudden madness, but
rather that I have been all along mistaken for another, whose glad
office it may perhaps be to cheer a father's saddened life, while I
remain unrecognized, unsought--the fatherless, motherless one, I am
accustomed to consider myself. If you have lost a daughter, God
grant she may be restored to you, to love you as I would do, were I
so blessed as to be that daughter! And I--consider me not a
stranger; let me be your child in heart; let me love, pray, and
weep for you; let me pour out my soul in thankfulness for the kind
care and sympathy you have already given me. And yet, though I
disclaim it all, and dare not, yes, dare not, dwell for a moment on
the thought that you are otherwise than deceived in believing me
your child, my heart leaps up in spite of me, and I tremble and
almost cease to breathe as there flashes upon me the possibility,
the blissful God-given hopes! No, no! I will not think of it, lest
I could not bear to have it crushed