Walter happy, how happy should I be!  I would be more than willing to depart; but there would be still a care for something in this worn-out and withered frame.  It will be far better to be with Jesus, but He will keep me here as long as He has any thing for me to do.  The dear girls!  I am glad they are enjoying themselves, but I long to see them again.  I hope they will not be carried away by the gay life they are leading.  I shall be glad when they are at their home duties again.

“’It will be well with Arthur and Alice; you know old maids are always the best informed on other people’s love affairs.  When Arthur left home Alice felt only a sisterly affection for him; when Walter went away it was really no more for him either, but her kind heart grieved when she saw him so situated:  and sympathy, you know, is akin to love.  She must remember now the importance that attaches itself to an engagement of marriage, and not give Arthur any more rivals.  She was off her guard before, as her feeling an affection for Arthur was considered rather too much a matter of course; but she cannot fail at some future day to return his devoted affection.  In the mean time, the young people are both, I trust, doing well.  Arthur, so long in another section of his own dear country, will be less apt to be unduly prejudiced in favor of his own; and Alice will only mingle in the gay world enough to see the vanity of its enjoyments.  She will thus be prepared to perform with fidelity the duties that belong to her position as the wife of a country gentleman.  No wonder that my spectacles are dim and my old eyes aching after this long letter.  Love to dear Cousin Weston, to the girls, to yourself, and all the servants.

  “‘From COUSIN JANET.’

“’Phillis says she has not enough to do to keep her employed.  She has not been well this winter; her old cough has returned, and she is thinner than I ever saw her.  Dr. L. has been to see her several times, and he is anxious for her to take care of herself.  She bids me say to Bacchus that if he have broken his promise, she hopes he will be endowed with strength from above to keep it better in future.  How much can we all learn from good Phillis!’”

Alice made no observation as her mother folded the letter and laid it on her dressing table; but there lay not now on the altar of her heart a spark of affection for one, who for a time, she believed to be so passionately beloved.  The fire of that love had indeed gone out, but there had lingered among its embers the form and color of its coals—­these might have been rekindled, but that was past forever.  The rude but kind candor that conveyed to her the knowledge of Walter’s unworthiness had dissolved its very shape; the image was displaced from its shrine.  Walter was indeed still beloved, but it was the affection of a pure sister for an erring brother; it was only to one to whom her soul in its confiding trust and virtue could look up, that she might accord that trusting devotion and reverence a woman feels for the chosen companion of her life.