To have gained a man's heart, as it were, in spite of him,--to have become the depositary of all his hopes, and yet not given him one scrap of a receipt for his whole investment,--has a wonderful attraction for the female nature. It is the kind of debt of honor she can appreciate best of all, and, it must be owned, it is one she knows how to deal with in a noble and generous spirit To the man so placed with regard to her she will observe an undying fidelity; she will defend him at any cost; she will uphold him at any sacrifice. Now, May not only confessed to Clara that Layton had made her the offer of his heart, but she told how heavily on her conscience lay the possible--if it were so much as possible--sin of having given him any encouragement. “You must write to the poor fellow for me, Clara. You must tell him from me--from myself, remember--that it would be only a cruelty to suffer him to cherish hope; that my self-accusings, painful enough now, would be tortures if I were to deceive him. I'm sure it is better, no matter what the anguish be, to deal thus honestly and fairly; and you can add that his noble qualities will be ever dwelt on by me--indeed, you may say by both of us--with the very deepest interest, and that no higher happiness could be than to hear of his success in life.” May said this and much more to the same purpose. She professed to feel for him the most sincere friendship, faintly foreshadowing throughout that it was not the least demerit on his part his being fascinated by such attractions as hers, though they were, in reality, not meant to captivate him. I cannot exactly say how far Clara gave a faithful transcript of her friend's feelings, for I never saw but a part of the letter she wrote; but certainly it is only fair to suppose, from its success, that it was all May could have desired. The epistle had followed Layton from an address he had given in Wales to Dublin, thence to the north of Ireland, and finally overtook him in Liverpool the night before he sailed for America.