fill my heart with love and charity, take from me this bitterness and envy.  It is Thou that dispenseth this bitter cup.  Father, I recognise Thy hand, and would indeed resign myself to Thee.  Oh, enable me to do so; teach me to love Thee alone, to do Thy work, to subdue myself, and in thankfulness receive the many blessings still around me; let me but see them happy.  Oh, my Father, let Thy choicest blessings be his lot, and for me” it was a bitter struggle, but ere the night had passed that young spirit had conquered, had uttered fervently, trustingly, heartfully,—­“for me, oh, my Father, let Thy will be done.”  And Ellen joined the breakfast-table the following morning calm and cheerful; there was no trace of internal suffering, no sign to betray even to her aunt all that she endured.  She entered cheerfully into all Emmeline’s happiness, accompanied her and Arthur, with Lord and Lady St. Eval, to Trevilion, and entered into every suggested plan, as if indeed no other thoughts engrossed her.  Arthur and Emmeline found in her an active and affectionate friend, and the respect and love with which she felt herself regarded seemed to soothe, while it urged her on to increased exertion.  Mrs. Hamilton watched her anxiously; she had at first fancied Arthur was the object of her niece’s regard, but this idea was not strengthened, and though she felt assured such was not the real cause of Ellen’s agitation that eventful evening, she could not, and did not guess the truth.

The revealing a long-treasured secret, the laying bare feelings of the heart, which have so long been concealed, even to our dearest friends, does not always produce happiness; there is a blank within us, a yearning after something we know not what, and the spirit loses for a time its elasticity.  It may be that the treasured secret has been so long enshrined in our innermost souls, we have felt it so long as only our own, that when we betray it to others, it is as if we parted from a friend; it is no longer our own, we can no longer hold sweet communion with it, for the voice of the world hath also reached it, and though at first its revealing is joy, it is followed by a sorrow.  So Herbert felt, when the excitement of congratulation, of the warm sympathy of his friends had given place to solicitude and thought.  Mary had been so long the shrine of his secret, fondest thoughts, he had so long indulged in delicious fancies, known to few others save himself, that now they had been intruded on even by the voice of gratulation, they would no longer throng around.  It was strange that on this night, when his choice had been so warmly approved of by all his friends, when words of such heartfelt kindness had been lavished in his ear, that the same dull foreboding of future evil, of suffering, of death, pressed heavily on him, as in earlier years it had been so wont to do.  He struggled against it; he would not listen to its voice, but it would have sway.  Donned it was not indeed, but from