Little by little, as her shattered nerves could bear it, the truth was revealed to Myra. It was a sad, sad trial, the uprooting of her pure domestic faith, the tearing asunder of those thousand delicate fibers that had so long woven, and clung, and rooted themselves around the parents who had adopted her. Love them she did, now, as it seemed, more intensely than ever, but there was excitement in her heart, a sort of wild, unsettled feeling, that destroyed all the sweet faith and tranquillity of affection. It was no longer the quiet and serene love which had clung around her from infancy, naturally and without effort, as wild blossoms bud upon a bank where the sunshine sleeps longest—but something of unrest and pain mingled with it all. In the history of her parents she found much to excite her imagination, her deep and sorrowful interest. It opened upon her with all the vividness of a romance, that kindled her fancy, while it pained her to the soul. Then came other thoughts and more thrilling anxieties. The beloved one, the man of her choice, whom she had dreamed of endowing with riches, from which she now seemed legally dispossessed—how would he receive the news of her orphanage—of her dependent state? Alas, how were all her proud and generous visions swept away! And yet, did she doubt his love or his pure disinterestedness? Never for a moment. Loyal, lofty, and unselfish as her own pure heart, she knew the beloved of that heart to be. She felt assured that his faith to the dowerless orphan would be kept more sacred than his pledge to the heiress. Full of this high trust, she wrote to Whitney and told him the whole.