And now I am tempted to lay down the pen. I would not weary thee, friend of my lonely hours, whoever thou art, by a repetition of scenes which show how poor and weak are the strongest human resolutions, when temptations assail and passions rise with the swell and the might of the stormy billows. But if I record weaknesses and errors, such as seldom sadden the annals of domestic life, it is that God may be glorified in the humiliation of man. It is that the light of the sun of righteousness may be seen to arise with healing in his beams, while the mists of error and the clouds of passion are left rolling below. Yes! We were all happy for a while, and in the midst of such pure, reviving influences, I became blooming and elastic as a mountain maid. Dr. Harlowe was the same kind, genial, warm-hearted friend. Mr. Regulus, the same--no, he was changed,--improved, softened still more than when he surprised me by his graces, in my metropolitan home. He looked several years younger, and a great deal handsomer. Had Margaret wrought this improvement? Had she indeed supplanted me in my tutor's guileless heart? I inquired of Edith after the wild creature, whom I suspected some secret influence was beginning to tame. "Oh! you have no idea how Madge is improved, since her visit to you," she answered. "She sometimes talks sensibly for five minutes at a time, and I have actually caught her singing and playing a sentimental air. Mamma says if she were in love with a man of sense and worth, he might make of her a most invaluable character." "Mr. Regulus, for instance!" said I. Edith laughed most musically. "Mr. Regulus in love! that would be a farce." "I have seen that farce performed," said Dr. Harlowe, who happened to come in at that moment, and caught her last words. "I have seen Mr. Regulus as much in love as--let me see," glancing at me, "as Richard Clyde." Much as I liked Dr. Harlowe I felt angry with him for an allusion, which always called the cloud to Ernest's brow, and the blush to my cheek. "Do tell me the object of his romantic passion?" cried Edith, who seemed excessively amused at the idea. "Am I telling tales out of school?" asked the doctor, looking merrily at me. "Do you not know the young enchantress, who has turned all the heads in our town, not excepting the shoemaker's apprentice and the tailor's journeyman? Poor Mr. Regulus could not escape the fascination. The old story of Beauty and the Beast,--only Beauty was inexorable this time." "Gabriella!" exclaimed Edith, with unutterable astonishment; "he always called her his child. Who would have believed it? Why, Gabriella, how many victims have your chariot wheels of conquest rolled over?" "I am afraid if _I_ had not been a married man, she would have added me to the number," said the doctor, with much gravity. "I am not certain that Mrs. Harlowe is not jealous, in secret, of my public devotion."