thoughts, her feelings. The work was a labor of love; the loving best
know what anguish their labor sometimes costs them. The pain of this
letter was not fairly understood by her who endured it,--it could
not be shared.

Why was she so cautious? why in her caution lurked so much of fear?
Perhaps she might have answered, if questioned by one she trusted,
that further intrusion of herself than should serve as a veil for
the really important information she had to convey would be cruel
intrusion. But there was a very different reason; it had to do with
the sudden revelation made to herself when her father wept at the
prisoner's hard fate,--a revelation that terrified her, and
influenced every succeeding movement; it had to do with the
illumination that came when Manuel told her the sad secret of his
heart,--with that moment when she stood up stronger in love than in
fear, stronger in devotion than in pride, strong for self-sacrifice,
like one who bears a charmed life pierced to the heart, and never so
capable as then.

More than once did Elizabeth rewrite that letter. More than once in
the progress to its completion did she break away from the strange
task, that had evidence of strangeness or of labor, to seek in the
garden, or with her needle, or in the society of father or mother,
deliverance from the trouble that disturbed her. In the toils of
many an argument with her heart and conscience was she caught; but
even through her doubting of the work she had engaged to perform,
she persevered in its continuance, till the letter was ready for
address.

It was surely right to aid, and comfort by such aid, one so