to paper, most solemnly enjoining her friend never
to expose her weakness to Mr. Stanley. This,
thought Julia, she never could do; it would be
unjust to me, and indelicate in her. So Julia wrote
as follows, first seeking her own apartment, and
carefully locking the door, that she might devote
her whole attention to friendship, and her letter.

"Dearest Anna,

"Your kind letter reach'd me after many an anxious
hour spent in expectation, and repays me ten-fold
for all my uneasiness. Surely, Anna, there is no one
that can write half so agreeably as yourself. I know
there must be a long--long--epistle for me on the
road, containing those descriptions and incidents
you promised to favour me with: how I long to read
them, and to show them to my aunt Margaret, who,
I believe, does not suspect you to be capable of
doing that which I know, or rather feel, you can.
Knowing from any thing but feeling and the innate
evidence of our sympathies, seems to me
something like heresy in friendship. Oh, Anna! how
could you be so cruel as to show my letters to any
one, and that to a gentleman and a stranger? I
never would have served you so, not even to good
Charles Weston, whom I esteem so highly, and who
really wants neither judgment nor good nature,
though he is dreadfully deficient in fancy. Yet
Charles is a most excellent young man, and I gave