“Do not think I was in love with our young pastor. I fancied that my heart was dead to such impressions, and it was only with quiet friendship that I greeted him when he renewed his acquaintance with her whom he had once known as the glittering belle of a ball-room. I saw him frequently, for I now understood the value of wealth and influence when they could be made subservient to the interests of religion and humanity. My purse as well as my time was readily bestowed for the good of others. Always in extremes, I was in danger of running into the error of fanaticism, and I owe it to Louis that I am now a rational, and I trust, earnest Christian. But a long time elapsed after this renewal of our intercourse before I was permitted to read the volume of his heart. It was not until he was well assured that the change which he beheld was the result, not of temporary disgust with the world, but of a thorough conviction of error, that he ventured to indulge the affections of his nature. He had loved me, Emily, during my days of vanity and folly. His cold, stern manner was a penance imposed upon himself, to expiate his weakness, and while he strove to scorn my levity, he was, in fact, the slave of my caprice. But he crushed the passion even in its bud, and forced himself to regard me only as his cousin’s bride. Yet the glimpses of better feelings which sometimes struggled through every frivolity, almost overcame his resolution, and the conversation which first awakened me to reflection, was the result of a sense of duty strangely blended with the impulses of a hopeless passion. “Perfect confidence now existed between us. My external life had been almost an unbroken calm, but my heart’s history was one of change and tumult and darkness. Louis wept,—aye, wept with joy, when he learned that his hand had sown the good seed within my bosom. It is Madame de Stäel who says that ‘Truth, no matter by what atmosphere it is surrounded, is never uttered in vain;’ and I am a living proof that she is right. I have now been five years a wife; and, though my husband has not a face that limners love to paint and ladies to look upon,—though his form is not moulded to perfect symmetry, and his limbs lack the graceful comeliness of manly strength,—in short,—though he is a _little, ugly, lame man_, yet I look upon him with a love as deep as it is enduring, for the radiant beauty of his character has blinded my feeble eyes to mere personal defects. Frank Harcourt was the sculptured image,—the useless ornament of a boudoir, but Louis,—my own Louis is the unpolished casket,—rude in its exterior, but enclosing a pearl of price,—the treasure of a noble spirit.” “And what has become of your former lover?”