At length Eddie brought home the letter, the contents of which I
have given in a former chapter. It relieved her heart of a great
burden. In fact, she felt some compunctions of conscience--she
thought she must have judged him wrongfully, for it hardly seemed
possible to her that a stranger to her husband would have engaged
him, if he had presented himself immediately after a long
continued debauch.

That night, as she knelt by her bedside, she thanked God for His
loving-kindness to her, in her hour of great trial. But, after she
had retired and began to think over what the letter contained, she
found that while, on the whole, its contents gave her great cause
for thankfulness, yet, that it made her feel inexpressibly sad--
sad, because she would have again to part with tried and true
friends and go among strangers.

Never in her life had she been the recipient of more gentle
attentions and delicate expressions of kindness than since she had
resided in Rochester. True, some of her neighbors were more
curious in regard to her affairs than she thought was consistent
with good breeding, and sometimes they made inquiries which she
did not wish to answer, but which she did not know how to evade
without giving offence. However, this trait of a certain class of
her American friends--and which, by-the-bye, has furnished a fund
for humorists the world over--was more than redeemed by their
genuine kindness and willingness to help upon every possible
occasion. And some, she thought, were noble examples of what men
and women are when in them natural goodness is joined with
intelligence and culture; for they seemed to divine her wants like