For the first time in my life I feel the sweet certainty of duplication. My heart swells with the beautiful faith of hope deferred. Those heavenly lines we have sung so often together in our meeting-house come back to my mind-- "To patient faith the prize is sure--" I dare not go farther and complete the rhyme, because human sensation should not encroach on the divine; but the spirit of that hymn sings in my heart; for if there is anything on this earth that woman should be grateful for, it is love. Yes, my sisters, at last I feel that I am beloved. A ray of sympathetic feeling has darted from a grand and noble soul to mine, changing that dull, sandy coast to Elysium. Last night, when I retired to the secrecy of my chamber, it seemed to me that if ever a woman's heart--beg pardon, a young girl's heart--was born again, mine had become more tenderly infantine than it was when I lay one week old in my loving mother's arms. The moonlight was streaming through the muslin curtains of my room when I entered it. It was an ovation of silvery light dawning upon the new life that opens before me. I do not know how other people feel when the crisis of fate is on them, but in my heart there is room for nothing but infinite thankfulness. Yes, sisters, I think you can conscientiously congratulate me. Virtue does sometimes meet with its own reward, especially when it is combined with youthfulness, elegance, and high mental attributes. XCVI. C. O. D. Dear sisters:--The cruelty of one female woman to another is something awful. As a general thing, E. E. Dempster is a good-natured, amiable person, but her conduct on the very day after that heavenly season on the shore was worthy of the Spanish Inquisition. She has lacerated the heart in my bosom, and torn me away from this place like a ruthless highwayman. That is what she has done. Early in the morning, while I was dreaming sweetly of the sea-shore, that unfeeling female rushed into my room. "Phœmie," says she, "you can't sleep any longer. We are packing up for the city. Cecilia has been insulted here, and I won't stay another hour in the place." "What! what is it?" says I. "How could you! He was just giving up metaphor and coming squarely out in the sweetest way." "You will have no more than time to pack your trunk before the train starts," says she. "Starts--what for! where?" "For New York, and after that to Saratoga; Cecilia insists on it, poor, sweet darling." "For New York?" says I. "On the way to Saratoga." "But--but who is going. Is--is--?" "Why, you and I, Dempster, and that sweet, ill-used child. Would you believe it, that rude boy's father refuses to whip him, and said a girl that could give a black eye with her parasol was--well, I can't find the heart to repeat it. At any rate, she doesn't stay another hour under the same roof with that little fiend." "But is that all--Oh, tell me is no one else going?" says I feeling as if a ton of lead had been heaped on me.