ene has
sent me the picture, and the pleasure it gives me increases every day.
Indeed, I am so well off in every way, that you must not grieve yourself
about me, though I thank you very much for what you say. Laura reads to
me all the evening from dinner to tea. I am much better than I was in
the winter, and am enjoying the soft spring air from the open window,
making it seem as if it was much later in the year. 'Good-bye, my dear
cousin; may God bless and comfort you. Remember, that after all, it was
God's will, not your doing; and therefore, as he said himself, all is as
it should be, and so it will surely be.

'Your affectionate cousin,
'AMABEL F. MORVILLE.'

Childishly simple as this letter might be called, with its set of facts
without comment, and the very commonplace words of consolation, it spoke
volumes to Philip of the spirit in which it was written--resignation,
pardon, soothing, and a desire that her farewell, perhaps her last,
should carry with it a token of her perfect forgiveness. Everything from
Amabel did him good; and he was so perceptibly better, that his sister
exclaimed, when she was next alone with Dr. Henley, 'I understand it
all, poor fellow; I thought long ago, he had some secret attachment; and
now I see it was to Amabel Edmonstone.'

'To Lady Morville?'

'Yes. You know how constantly he was at Hollywell, my aunt so fond of
him? I don't suppose Amy knew of it; and, of course, she could not be
blamed for accepting such an offer as Sir Guy's; besides, she never had
much opinion of her own.'

'How? No bad speculation for him. She must have a handsome jointure; but
what are your grounds?'

'Everything. Don't you remember he would not go to the marriage? He
mentions her almost like a saint; can't hear her name from any one
else--keeps her letter to open alone, is more revived by it than
anything else. Ah! depend upon it, it was to avoid her, poor fellow,
that he refused to go to Venice with them.'

'Their going to nurse him is not as if Sir Guy suspected it.'

'I don't suppose he did, nor Amy either. No one ever had so much power
over himself.'

Philip would not have thanked his sister for her surmise, but it was so
far in his favour that it made her avoid the subject, and he was thus
spared from hearing much of Amabel or of Redclyffe. It was bad enough
without this. Sometimes in nursery tales, a naughty child, under the
care of a fairy, is chained to an exagger