I have anticipated the reception of this letter, but I feared I might forget to mention it. It is delightful to see a fine character gradually wrought out of seemingly rough and unpromising elements. It is beautiful to witness the triumph of pure, disinterested affection in the heart of woman. It is sweet to know that the angel of wedded love scatters thornless flowers in some happy homes,--that there are some thresholds not sprinkled by blood, but guarded by confidence, which the _destroying demon_ of the household is not permitted to pass over. I do not like to turn back to myself, lest they who follow me should find the path too shadowy and thorny. But is it not said that they who go forth weeping, bearing precious seed, shall come again rejoicing, bending under the weight of golden sheaves? I wrote to Ernest for the first time, for we had never been parted before. Again and again I commenced, and threw down the pen in despair. My heart seemed locked, closed as with Bastile bars. What words of mine could pierce through the cloud of infamy in which his remembrance wrapped me? He would not believe my strange, improbable tale. He would cast it from him as a device of the evil spirit, and brand me with a deeper curse. No! if he was so willing to cast me off, to leave me so coldly and cruelly, without one farewell line, one wish to know whether I were living or dead, let him be. Why should I intrude my vindication on him, when he cared not to hear it? He had no right to believe me guilty. Had a winged spirit from another sphere come and told me that _he_ was false, I would have spurned the accusation, and clung to him more closely and more confidingly. "But you knew his infirmity," whispered accusing conscience, "even before you loved him; and have you not seen him writhing at your feet in agonies of remorse, for the indulgence of passions more torturing to himself than to you! It is you who have driven him from country and home, innocently, it is true, but he is not less a wanderer and an exile. Write and tell him the simple, holy truth, then folding your hands meekly over your heart, leave the result to the disposal of the God of futurity." Then words came like water rushing through breaking ice. They came without effort or volition, and I knew not what they were till I saw them looking at me from the paper, like my own image reflected in a glass. Had I been writing a page for the book of God's remembrance, it could not have been more nakedly true. I do believe there is inspiration now given to the spirit in the extremity of its need, and that we often speak and write as if moved by the Holy Ghost, and language comes to us in a Pentecostal shower, burning with heaven's fire, and tongues of flame are put in our mouth, and our spirits move as with the wings of a mighty wind. I recollect the closing sentence of the letter. I knew it contained my fate; and yet I felt that I had not the power to change it.