effusion, that I will lay it before the reader without adding or altering
a word.

"Thank you, thank you, dearest Eugene! I have received, then, the first
letter you ever wrote me. I cannot tell you how strange it seemed to me,
and how agitated I felt on seeing it, more so, I think, than if it had
been yourself who had returned. However, when the first delight of
reading it faded away, I found that it had not made me so happy as it
ought to have done--as I thought at first it had done. You seem sad and
melancholy; a certain nameless gloom appears to me to hang over your
whole letter. It affects my spirits--why I know not--and my tears fall
even while I read the assurances of your unaltered, unalterable love--and
yet this assurance your Madeline--vain girl!--never for a moment
disbelieves. I have often read and often heard of the distrust and
jealousy that accompany love; but I think that such a love must be a
vulgar and low sentiment. To me there seems a religion in love, and its
very foundation is in faith. You say, dearest, that the noise and stir of
the great city oppress and weary you even more than you had expected. You
say those harsh faces, in which business, and care, and avarice, and
ambition write their lineaments, are wholly unfamiliar to you;--you turn
aside to avoid them,--you wrap yourself up in your solitary feelings of
aversion to those you see, and you call upon those not present--upon your
Madeline! and would that your Madeline were with you! It seems to me--
perhaps you will smile when I say this--that I alone can understand you--
I alone can read your heart and your emotions;--and oh! dearest Eugene,
that I could read also enough of your past history to know all that has
cast so habitual a shadow over that lofty heart and that calm and
profound nature! You smile when I ask you--but sometimes you sigh,--and
the sigh pleases and soothes me better than the smile.