"Somebody to belong to you--to care for you--to pet you--your own personal property in short--who can't get rid of you, even when you're old and ugly. Yes, I'm glad I married poor dear Augustus. And, child, I hope to see you married also.. A good little thing like you would make a capital wife to somebody. Why, simpleton, I declare she's crying!" It must have been the over-excitement of this day; but I felt as if, had I not cried, my temples and throat would have burst with a choking pain, that lasted long after Lisabel was gone. They did not altogether stay more than four hours. Augustus talked of riding over to the camp, to see his friend, Doctor Urquhart, whom he has heard nothing of since the wedding-day; but Lisabel persuaded him against it. Men's friendship with one another is worth little, apparently. Penelope here said she could answer for Doctor Urquhart's being in the land of the living, as she had met him a week before at Cartwright's cottage, the day the poor old man was killed. Why did she not tell me of this? But then she has taken such a prejudice against him, and exults so over what she calls his "rude behaviour to the family." It always seemed to me very foolish to be for ever defending those whose character is itself a sufficient defence. If a false word is spoken of a friend, one must of course deny it, disprove it. But to be incessantly battling with personal prejudice or animosity, I would scorn it! Ay, as utterly as I would scorn defending myself under similar attacks. I think, in every lesser affection that is worth the name--the same truth holds good--which I remember being struck with in a play, the only play I ever saw acted. The heroine is told by her sister--= `````"Katherine, ````You love this man--defend him."= She answers:--=. `````"You have said, ```I love him. That's my defence. I'll not ```Assert, in words, the truth on which I've cast ```The stake of life. I love him, and am silent."= At least, I think the passage ran thus--for I cut it out of a newspaper afterwards, and long, remembered it. What an age it seems since--that one play, to which Francis took us. And what a strange, dim dream, has become the impression it left; something like that I always have in reading of Thekla and Max; of love so true and strong--so perfect in its holy strength, that neither parting, grief, nor death, have any power over it. Love, which makes you feel that once to have possessed it, must be bliss unutterable, unalienable--better than any happiness or prosperity that this world could give--better than anything in the world or out of it, except the love of God.