heirloom of intellectual ability that has been my sole dower from my dear
father and his learned ancestors. And when I am Ross Norval's wife I will
reveal myself to these letter-friends of my inner life, and, meeting them
no longer in the spirit only, let them see eye to eye their hidden sister,
their 'nebulous child,' as they have half playfully, half angrily, called
me. A husband's hand shall rive the rock in which their crystal has been
for years embedded.

"Oh, Ross, I shall be glad to come to my inheritance through you; to
gather my band of chosen ones into my actual, as I have long held them in
my inner, life; to know those at last whom my unprotected woman's state
has hitherto forbidden me to know. And if I take him, if I give myself to
him, I shall at last have the desire of my life. Ah, Ross! you will never
know that your boyish flattering, which meant nothing to you, and should
have meant nothing to me, did really mean so much that it simply broke my
heart, leaving me at sixteen so utterly incapable of loving any man but
yourself that since then no hand has ever touched the seal which closed
the fountain of love and passion in my heart for ever. Ah! I wonder what
penalty there is for those who carelessly destroy our hopes and blot out
all possibilities of love from us? What would you say, Ross Norval, if you
knew that the last kiss I ever gave to any man was given you that cold,
dark day they buried my father? You came with a note from Bell--she was
dying, she said; after to-day no one but her family would be admitted to
her: would I come and say good-bye to her, even from my father's grave? I
went with you, and stayed an hour with her. Then you brought me, more dead
than alive, back to my desolate home, and taking me in your arms carried
me from the carriage to my bed. As you laid me down you said, 'My sister's
little friend, I am glad to have seen you once again. Bell tells me all
these years I have been absent you have been pleasant friends to each
other. You are dear and sweet because she loved you. I shall never see you