FEB. 24.-Ernest has been gone a week. His mother is worse and he had to go. I wanted to go too, but he said it was not worth while, as he should have to return directly. Dr. Embury takes charge of his patients during his absence, and Mrs. E. and Aunty and the children come to see me very often. I like Mrs. Embury more and more. She is not so audacious as I am, but I believe she agrees with me more than she will own. FEB. 25.-Ernest writes that his mother is dangerously ill, and seems in great distress. I am mean enough to want all his love myself, while I should hate him if he gave none to her. Poor Ernest! If she should die he would be sadly afflicted! FEB. 27.-She died the very day he wrote. How I long to fly to him and to comfort him! I can think of nothing else. I pray day and night that God would make me a better wife. A letter came from mother at the same time with Ernest's. She evidently misses me more than she will own. Just as soon as Ernest returns home I will ask him to let her come and live with us. I am sure he will; he loves her already, and now that his mother has gone he will find her a real comfort. I am sure she will only make our home the happier. FEB. 28.-Such a dreadful thing is going to happen! I have cried and called myself names by turns all day. Ernest writes that it has been decided to give up the old homestead, and scatter the family about among the married sons and daughters. Our share is to be his father and his sister Martha, and he desires me to have two rooms got ready for them at once. So all the glory and the beauty is snatched out of my married life at one swoop! And it is done by the hand I love best, and that I would not have believed could be so unkind. I am rent in pieces by conflicting emotions and passions. One moment I am all tenderness and sympathy for poor Ernest, and ready to sacrifice everything for his pleasure. The next I am bitterly angry with him for disposing of all my happiness in this arbitrary way. If he had let me make common cause with him and share his interests with him, I know I am not so abominably selfish as to feel as I do now. But he forces two perfect strangers upon me and forever shuts our doors against my darling mother. For, of course, she cannot live with us if they do. And who knows what sort of people they are? It is not everybody I can get along with, nor is it everybody can get along with me. Now, if Helen were coming instead of Martha, that would be some relief. I could love her, I am sure, and she would put up with my ways. But your Marthas I am afraid of. Oh, dear, dear, what a nest of scorpions this affair has stirred up within me! Who would believe I could be thinking of my own misery while Ernest's mother, whom he loved so dearly, is hardly in her grave! But I have no heart, I am stony and cold. It is well to have found out just what I am!