But though my mind was buoyed up by the exaltation of my feelings, my physical powers began to droop. I inherited something of my mother's constitutional weakness; and, suddenly as the leaden weight falls when a clock has run down and the machinery ceases to play, a heavy burden of lethargy settled down upon me, and I was weak and helpless as a child. Dull pain throbbed in my brain, as if it were girdled by a hard, tightening band. It was several days before I left my bed, and more than a week before I quitted my chamber. The recollection of Ernest's tender watchfulness during these days of illness, even now suffuses my eyes with tears. Had I been a dying infant he could not have hung over me with more anxious, unslumbering care. Oh! whatever were his faults, his virtues redeemed them all. Oh! the unfathomable depths of his love! I was then willing to die, so fearful was I of passing out of this heavenly light of home joy into the coldness of doubt, the gloom of suspicion. Ernest, with all his proneness to exaggerate the importance of my actions, did not do so in reference to this unhappy transaction. Paragraphs were inserted in the papers, in which the initials of my name were inserted in large capitals to attract the gazing eye. The meeting in the Park, the jewels found in the possession of the forger, the abrupt manner in which they were taken from the jeweller's shop, even the gray shawl and green veil, were minutely described. Ernest had made enemies by the haughty reserve of his manners and the exclusiveness of his habits, and they stabbed him in secret where he was most vulnerable. A brief sketch of the real circumstances and the causes which led to them, was published in reply. It was written with manly boldness, but guarded delicacy, and rescued my name from the fierce clutch of slander. Then followed glowing eulogiums on the self-sacrificing daughter, the young and beautiful wife, till Ernest's sensitive spirit must have bled over the notoriety given to her, whom he considered as sacred as the priestess of some holy temple, and whose name was scarcely to be mentioned but in prayer. The only comment he made on them was,-- "My mother and Edith will see these." "I will write and tell them all," I answered; "it will be too painful to you." "We will both write," he said; and we did. "You blame yourself too much," cried he, when he perused my letter. "You speak too kindly, too leniently of me," said I, after reading his; "yet I am glad and grateful. Your mother will judge me from the facts, and nothing that you or I can say will warp or influence her judgment. She understands so clearly the motives of action,--she reads so closely your character and mine, I feel that her decision will be as righteous as the decree of eternal justice. Oh that I were with her now, for my soul looks to her as an ark of safety. Like the poor weary dove, it longs to repose its drooping wings and fold them in trembling joy on her sheltering breast."