ng home? Coming really home soon, sweet Eva? Ah! I
am so happy, so joyful on that account, and yet a little anxious: but
don't mind that; come, only come, and all will be right! When I can only
look into your eyes, I feel that all will be clear. Your good
eyes!--Gabriele and I call them 'our blue ones'--how long it is that I
have not seen you--two long years! I cannot conceive, dear Eva, how I
have lived so long without you; but then it is true that we have not
been in reality separated. I have accompanied you into the great world;
I have been with you to balls and concerts; I have enjoyed with you your
pleasures and the homage which has been paid to you. Ah! what joy for me
that I have learned to love you! Since then I have lived twofold, and
felt myself so rich in you! And now you are coming back; and then, shall
we be as happy as before?

"Forgive, forgive this note of interrogation! But sometimes a disquiet
comes over me. You speak so much of the great world, of joys and
enjoyments, which--it is not in home to afford you. And your grand new
acquaintance--ah, Eva! let them be ever so agreeable and interesting,
they would not love you as we do, as I do! And then this Major R----! I
am afraid of him, Eva. It appears to me the most natural thing in the
world that he should love you, but--ah, Eva! it grieves me that you
should feel such affection for him. My dear, good Eva, attach yourself
not too closely to him before--but I distress you, and that I will not.
Come, only come to us; we have so much to talk to you about, so much to
hear from you, so much to say to you!

"I fancy you will find the house yet more agreeable than formerly; we
have added many little decorations to it. You will again take breakfast
with us--that comfortable meal, and my best-beloved time; and tea with
us--your favourite hour, in which we were assembled for a merry evening,
and were often quite wild. This morning I took out your breakfast-cup,
and kissed that part of the edge on which the gold was worn off.

"We will again read books together, and think about and talk about them
together. We will again go out together and enjoy all the freshness and
quiet of the woods. And would it not be a blessed thing to wander thus
calmly through life, endeavouring to improve ourselves, and to make all
those around us happier; to admire the works of God, and humbly to thank
Him for all that he has given to us and others? Should we not then have
lived and f