ection. In the mean time, the young people are
both, I trust, doing well. Arthur, so long in another section of
his own dear country, will be less apt to be unduly prejudiced in
favor of his own; and Alice will only mingle in the gay world
enough to see the vanity of its enjoyments. She will thus be
prepared to perform with fidelity the duties that belong to her
position as the wife of a country gentleman. No wonder that my
spectacles are dim and my old eyes aching after this long letter.
Love to dear Cousin Weston, to the girls, to yourself, and all the
servants.

"'From COUSIN JANET.'

"'Phillis says she has not enough to do to keep her employed. She
has not been well this winter; her old cough has returned, and she
is thinner than I ever saw her. Dr. L. has been to see her several
times, and he is anxious for her to take care of herself. She bids
me say to Bacchus that if he have broken his promise, she hopes he
will be endowed with strength from above to keep it better in
future. How much can we all learn from good Phillis!'"

Alice made no observation as her mother folded the letter and laid it on
her dressing table; but there lay not now on the altar of her heart a spark
of affection for one, who for a time, she believed to be so passionately
beloved. The fire of that love had indeed gone out, but there had lingered
among its embers the form and color of its coals--these might have been
rekindled, but that was past forever. The rude but kind candor that
conveyed to her the knowledge of Walter's unworthiness had dissolved its
very shape; the image was displaced from its shrine. Walter was indeed
still beloved, but it was the affection of a pure sister for an erring
brother; it was only to one to whom her soul in its confiding trust and
virtue could look up, that she might accord that trusting devotion and
reverence a woman feels for the chosen companion of her life.

And this, I hear you say, my reader, is the awakening of a love dream so
powerful as to undermine the health of the sleeper--so dark as to cast a
terror and a gloom upon many who loved her; it is even so in life, and
would you have it otherwise? Do you commend that morbid affection which
clings to its object not only through sorrow, but sin? through sorrow--but
not in sin. Nor is it possible for a pure-minded woman to love unworthily
and continue pure.

This Alice felt, and she came