_January._—’Tis strange! no letters from Col. Dudley. Can he be ill? Oh! this sickening suspense—this living death! I fancy, too, that my enemies—for so I must call Mrs. Dudley and Clare—watch me narrowly—triumphantly. What can it mean? Oh, Father! in thy mercy, spare me this anticipated misery! Let the bitter cup pass from me, if thou wilt; for I feel my utter weakness and inability to bear up under these harrowing thoughts. Impossible! I will not pen any thing against his truth. He must be sick. Not even to this mute witness of my love will I own, that even in _thought_ I suspect him. I will show him this one of these days yet to come, when the happiness I then shall feel will repay me for all my sorrows—and then he will know how much he was loved. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” says the song—and it is true with me, at least, I wonder, is it the case with him. I will go down now—for everybody is away to-day, shopping in the neighboring town—and play all his favorites, and cheat myself with the belief that he is beside me—that I feel his warm breath play among my curls—that, on the lifting of my eye, I shall meet his glance, so full of love and trust, as to shame me in my inmost heart for ever _thinking_ he could prove false. _February._—Oh, God! how unspeakably miserable am I. And you, old friend, that has been the record of my joy—my short dream of happiness—be also the page upon which I chronicle my grief—my deep despair. I am calmer now; I did think that I should have crazed under the blow; but the Father has strengthened and borne me up. I had been expecting an answer to my last letter from Hugh, (oh! how anxiously, for ’twas past the usual time,) when one day my Uncle Alton sent for me. “Florence,”—as I entered—“I have a package for you, sent under cover to myself. I am afraid that this will prove a sad trial to you; but as you have your own self to thank for it, I am in hopes, for your sake, it will not occasion you much heart-grief. I am playing the part of Job’s comforters; but I cannot help saying to you, that you should remember how you speak of the absent, for sooner or later, they always are informed of bad speeches by some injudicious friend.” “What does this long preface lead to, Uncle Alton,” said I, with a smile, though my heart felt heavy as lead, and as cold. “Surely I am not mixed up in any of the neighborhood slander, I hope. I always thought that you did me the justice to imagine that I care little, and talk less, of the worthies who compose the society attainable at Alton.” My uncle, by this time, had handed me the package which he had been separating from its envelop; and he now coldly, I may say sternly, addressed me,