"Ah, Miriam, this is all a magic lantern! The people are phantoms, the realities are shadows, and I a wretched humbug, duller than all! Two men have lived and breathed for me on the face of this earth--two only. One was my much-offending and deeply-suffering father. The other--O, Miriam, to think of him is crime; but in his life, and that alone, I live. I send you Praed's last beautiful little song--'Tell him I love him yet.' It will tell you every thing. An answer I have scribbled to it as if written by a man. Keep both, and when I am dead, should you survive me, dear, lay them if you can in my coffin, close, close to my heart!" Three years more, and Bertie is in Rome, independent, at last, through her own exertions, and able to gratify her tastes. I receive thence statues, and pictures, and cameos, all exquisite of their kind, her princely gifts, her legacies. Then comes a long silence. She knew what faith was mine when she last abode beneath my roof and made herself a little impertinently merry at my expense in consequence of this new order of things. Now comes a letter (a paper envelope accompanying it)--Bertie La Vigne has entered the Catholic Church, through baptism and confirmation, so briefly states the letter written in her own hand and of date some months back, retained, no doubt, through forgetfullness, until reminded. The paper, of recent issue, tells of the ceremony at St. Peter's, which admitted to the novitiate several noble ladies, native and foreign, and among the rest an _artist_ of merit, Miss Lavinia La Vigne, of Georgia, United States of America. On the margin of the paper were a few penciled words in her own handwriting: "I have found the reality." This was all. I shall never see her again unless I go to Rome, and then only through a grating, or in the presence of others like herself, for she has taken the black veil, and retired behind a shadow deep as that cast from the cypress-shaded tomb. Yet, under existing circumstances, and in consideration of her early experiences which no success nor later future could obliterate, or render less unendurable, I believe she has chosen the wiser part. Peace be with thee, Bertie, whether in earth or in heaven!