'Of what?' thought I, when I reached this provoking interruption,--and I too began to dream. 'Does he still love me?' I asked myself. 'Can the grave, wise Mr Maitland still remember the rosy cheek and the long black eyelashes? Can he do no more than fly from his bane, but long after it still?' In spite of the regulations under which I had laid my heart,--in spite of the sorrow which weighed heavily upon it, the spirit of Ellen Percy fluttered in it for a moment. 'But why should I smile at his weakness, though I am myself exempt from that strange whim called love. Yes, certainly, for ever exempt. I have not withstood Maitland to be won by the monkey tricks and mawkish commonplace of ordinary men. "Power over his happiness!" But for this strange coldness of heart, and my own unpardonable folly, I might have made him happy. But that is all over now. Now I can only wish and pray for his happiness. And if it be necessary to his peace that he forget me, I will pray that he may. No one heart on earth will then, indeed, beat warm to me; but the earth and all that it contains will soon pass away.'--And I shed some tears either over the transitory nature of all things here below, or over some reflection not quite so well defined. Having perused the mutilated letter more than once, and finding my curiosity rather stimulated than gratified by the perusal, I certainly did not relax in the diligence with which I examined my friend's repositories. But I could not discover one line from Mr Maitland of a later date than six months before the death of Miss Mortimer; and I recollected, that though she regularly received his letters, and affected no mystery in regard to them, she never desired me to read them, but often in my presence destroyed them with her own hand. For the preservation of the fragment I seemed indebted to accident alone; and I more than half suspected, that Mr Maitland's later correspondence had purposely been concealed from the one who formed its principal subject. I wondered at my friend's caution. 'Could she know me so little,' thought I, 'as to fear that I should be infected by this folly of Maitland's?--That I should be won by this involuntary second-hand sort of courtship?--That I should be mean enough to like a man who in a manner rejected me?' But whatever was the motive of Miss Mortimer's caution, she had left no indication of Mr Maitland's present sentiments towards me; nor any clue by which I could trace to him the source of my unexpected wealth.