me this evening at the same place and the same hour as before.

"Yours--yours for ever,

"H. O.

"N.B.--The bearer is trustworthy, and already acquainted with the secret
of our attachment, so that you need not hesitate to send me a reply by
him--and let it be a written one."

After pursuing this, she paused for a moment, and felt so much
embarrassed by the fact of their love being known to a third person,
that she could not look upon the messenger, while addressing him,
without shame-facedness and confusion.

"Wait a little," she said at length, "I will return presently"--and
with a singular conflict between joy, shame, and terror, she passed with
downcast looks out of the shrubbery, sought her own room, and having
placed writing materials before her, attempted to write. It was
not, however, till after some minutes that she could collect herself
sufficiently to use them. As she took the pen in her hand, something
like guilt seemed to press upon her heart--the blood forsook her cheeks,
and her strength absolutely left her.

"Is not this wrong," she thought. "I have already been guilty of
dissimulation, if not of direct-falsehood to my father, and now I am
about to enter into a correspondence without his knowledge."

The acuteness of her moral sense occasioned her, in fact, to feel much
distress, and the impression of religious sanction early inculcated