“Yes, certainly!” she replied. “See, there is her name engraved inside”—and so it was. “Is not that amusing, mamma?” she continued, turning to her mother, and explaining what she seemed to think an excellent joke. Dashwood saw the truth at once in her tones and whole manner. “What is that,” said Emma, crossing the room to join them, “that seems to be amusing you all so?” “Only, my dear,” said Ellen, laughing, “that Mr. Dashwood has mistaken me for you. Very complimentary to me, certainly; though I don’t know what you’ll say to such compliments.” “This package,” said Mr. Dashwood, gravely, without raising his eyes to Emma’s face, “is, it seems, addressed to you. Miss Pearsall broke the seal under a mistake. But there is no mistake now, I believe,” he added, with an emphasis that sent Emma’s blood tingling to the tips of her fingers. He handed her the package, slightly bowed and passed on. Emma saw him no more that evening. Startled and terrified by the facts, which she felt even her powers of dissimulation were unequal to cover, she was yet more alarmed by the manner in which he had received them. Had he seemed angry, though frightened, she still would have had hope. Had he reproached her, she might have wept and apologized. But his manner had been cold and stern; he had merely bowed, he had not even looked at her, and left her. She passed an agonized night of doubt and suspense. He suffered no less than herself, but not from doubt and suspense. Unhappily, there was no room for that. He was a man of firm mind, and decided character. His sense of honor was fine, almost romantic; and he was the soul of truth and integrity. He was not angry, but worse than that, he was shocked; and, shall we say it, disgusted. He had been easily blinded, because he fully confided. He was too upright, too high-minded, readily to suspect others. But his eyes once opened, and his rapid, clear mind saw the whole at once. The falsehoods that Emma had told him, much as they pained him, were not to him the worst part of the affair. He remembered her innocent looks, her unconscious air, her apparently frank and careless manner; and his soul sickened—for he felt, in the emphatic language of the ritual, that “the truth was not in her.” Confidence was destroyed forever. Happiness between them was out of the question. He wrote to her, “freeing her from an engagement with one whom she evidently not only did not trust, but feared.” The letter was a manly, feeling letter; short, but breathing the anguish of a deeply wounded spirit. Emma wept passionately over it; mourned, and mourned again, that she had not told him the truth in the beginning. “It was so unlucky,” as she kept repeating—for beyond that her sense of right did not go, even yet. But Mr. Dashwood was on his way to New Orleans. He left the Percivals to tell what story they pleased; and it was soon announced by her friends that “Emma had dismissed him.”