As soon as Dr. Lacey was alone, he sat down, anxious, yet fearing to know the contents of his letter.  At last he resolutely broke the seal, thinking to himself, “It cannot contain anything worse than I already know.”  One glance at the beginning and end of the letter confirmed his fears, and for a few moments he was unable to read a line; then summoning all his remaining courage, he calmly read the letter through, not omitting a single word, but comprehending the meaning of each sentence.  It was as follows: 

“Frankfort, March 25th, 18—.

“Dr. Lacey: 

“Sir—­Have you, during some weeks past, ever wondered why I did not write to you?  And in enumerating to yourself the many reasons which could prevent my writing, has it ever occurred to you that possibly I might be false?  Can you forgive me, Dr. Lacey, when I tell you that the love I once fancied I bore for you has wholly subsided, and I now feel for you a friendship, which I trust will be more lasting than my transient girlish love?

“Do you ask how I came to change so suddenly?  I can only answer by another confession still more painful and humiliating to me.  When I bade you adieu, I thought I loved you as well as I ever could again.  I say again, for—­but how shall I tell you?  How confess that my first affection was not given to you?  Yes, ere I had ever seen you, I loved another, and one, too, whom some would say it were sinful to love.

“But why harrow my feelings by awakening the past?  Suffice it to say that he whom I loved is dead.  We both saw him die, and I received upon my lips his last breath.  Truly if he were Julia’s in life, he was mine in death.  Did you never suspect how truly I loved Mr. Wilmot?  You were blinded by your misplaced affection for me, if you did not.  Julia, my noble-hearted sister Julia, knew it all.  I confessed my love to her, and on my knees begged her not to go to him, but to let me take her place at his bedside.  She complied with my request, and then bravely bore in silence the reproaches of the world for her seeming coldness.

“Dear Julia!  She seems strangely changed recently, and you would hardly know her, she is so gentle, so obliging, so amiable.  You ought to have heard her plead your cause with me.  She besought me almost with tears not to prove unfaithful to you, and when I convinced her that ’twas impossible for me to love another as I had Mr. Wilmot, she insisted on my writing, and not keeping you in suspense any longer.

“Dr. Lacey, if you could transfer your affection from me—­, but no, why should I speak of such a thing!  You will probably despise all my family.  Yet do not, I beseech you, cast them off for your poor Fanny’s sin.  They respect you highly, and Julia would be angry if she knew that I am about to tell you how she admires a certain Southern friend, who probably, by this time, thinks with contempt of little

“FannyMiddleton.”