“Miss Walton,—I return you your letters, and your vows of love—when the substance is not possessed, how worthless is the shadow. I scorn myself for having loved one who could so wantonly trifle with a trustful, loving heart, which has been taken when proffered, to throw away as a worthless object. May you be happy, but that I am afraid you will not be. I hope that you will be more careful of the next heart that you may witch to love you. At least, never say of him in the presence of either friends or enemies, “he will do well enough to amuse one’s self with in the country!” I again say, may you be happy, and as my happiness can only be in forgetting you, I shall never seek to hear of you; and rest easy that this will be the last letter with which you will ever be troubled from the hand of Hugh Dudley.” It was over! and I sat long silent and motionless with the letters before me. I then determined to bear uncomplainingly my fate, and never let _him_ know the agony which his thus breaking _our_ engagement had caused me. “Did I die from it,” was my proud resolution, “I will die in silence. He, to believe so quickly, so readily, an assertion made against me, by an enemy of his, and proved by an enemy of mine. Did he ask me, ‘Was it so—and wherefore?’ No: but acted on the information, careless of my pain—oh! well he knew that I loved him—and exulted in it from revenge. Had he asked me, oh! how humbly would I have acknowledged my fault, and throwing myself more trustingly on his love, how would I have prayed for forgiveness, till the proud man, in his strength, would have been softened by my tears, and taken me again in love to his bosom.” But it was over, and she who had caused this misery should not triumph. I jumped from my seat, bathed my eyes, curled my hair elaborately, decked myself in a most becoming dress, and on seeing my ashy cheeks, in the glance I gave into the glass, for the first time painted them with carmine. I then descended into the drawing-room. Mr. Harold, the wealthy merchant from the city, whom I have spoken of, had returned the day before, on a visit to my uncle, and for him, and to him, I played and sung. I was in my wildest spirits. I kept up this farce for weeks whenever the eyes of the household were upon me, till I thought in the struggle my mind must give way. At this crisis a letter came from a cousin of my mother, to whom I had written to ask for an asylum, gladly welcoming me to her home—for she was aged and infirm, and wanted companionship. I accepted at once; received a cold acquiescence from my uncle—a still more indifferent one from my cousin—and set out for my new home in Kentucky, determined to hide myself forever from the eyes of those whose triumph was built on the ruins of my happiness. Oh! Hugh, could you have known how deeply I have repented of that speech, wrung from my wounded pride, even you would