and strange, which touched her lover with an admiration which sometimes had a little awe in it. His own letters were delightful to Anne, but they were of a very different character. They were full of genuine love; for, so far as that went, there was nothing fictitious in his sentiments; but they were steady-going weekly letters, such as a man pens on a certain day and sends by a certain post, not only to the contentment of his own heart, but in fulfilment of what is expected of him, of what it is indeed his duty to do. This made a great difference; and Cosmo--who was full of intellectual perceptions and saw more clearly than, being not so complete in heart as in mind, it was to his own comfort to see--perceived it very clearly, with an uneasy consciousness of being ‘not up to’ the lofty strain which was required of him. But Anne, in her innocence and inexperience, perceived it not. His letters were delightful to her. The words seemed to glow and shine before her eyes. If there was a tame expression, a sentence that fell flat, she set it down to that reticence of emotion, that English incapacity for saying all that is felt and tendency to depreciate itself, which we all believe in, and which counts for so much in our estimates of each other. These letters, as I have said, added an actual something to be done to the entrancing occupation of ‘thinking over’ all that had happened and was going to happen. Whenever she had a little time to spare, Anne, with her heart beating, opened the little desk in which she kept these two or three precious performances. I think, indeed, she carried the last always about her, to be re-read whenever an occasion occurred: and it was with her heart intent upon this gratification, this secret delight which nobody knew of, that she went into her room, leaving her sister and stepmother still talking over their tea in the hall. More sweet to her than the best of company was this pleasure of sitting alone.