“Well, Sophie, I returned home on Monday. In the course of the week, B. visited us. He remained with us an honored guest for two weeks, and in those two weeks, Sophie!——His manner rather than his words seemed to reveal a warm admiration for me and everything about me. Our elegant house, well-chosen library, our busts and pictures, our tastefully planned grounds, everything seemed to give him a quiet and graceful delight. His manner to me seemed (for all was _seeming_) to reveal a charming mixture of reverence and affection. I was fascinated—drawn in. His manner seemed distant to my wife, _so_ distant that I never inclined to _jealousy_, but often to _vanity_; felt piqued that he did not appear to appreciate the merits of _her_, my most brilliant appendage. He visited little while he remained at our house; the charms of our house seemed to rivet him to the place. Parochial duty called me frequently from home; he was left to the hospitable care of my wife. They were much together. “The last day of his stay approached. And up to that day I was utterly unsuspicious of the cloud lowering black and heavy over my house! utterly unprepared for the descent of the thunderbolt that blasted my hearth! The day of his departure dawned. It had been arranged between us that I should drive him down to the village, in the carriage, to meet the steamboat that would pass in the evening. But early in the afternoon I was summoned to attend the bedside of a dying parishioner, at an opposite point of the village. I was constrained, therefore, to leave him, promising, however, to meet him at the steamboat hotel, before his departure.