The reader--if any one do read these pages--will easily divine the object of that early, but not less permanent, affection. Emily Somers had become, from the circumstances which I have related, my little pet and protégée. I loved her because I protected and defended her even against one whom I loved also. But soon I began to take an interest in the development of her mind, and I used to write out the purest and most beautiful passages of all I read, to read to her again; and learned to love her from the sympathy and the reciprocation of mutual ideas which this produced: but, by the time I was eighteen and she was sixteen, other feelings began to make themselves felt in my bosom. Then came the period when, from a very pretty child, she burst forth into one of the loveliest girls that it was possible to behold, and I soon learned to love with all the ardent and thrilling passion of manhood. Such is the history of my affection for her, and it is hardly necessary to say that it was returned. She had known me from infancy; she had never met with any thing but kindness at my hands; she had made me on all occasions her protector and her confidant; and she had found something even in the faults and foibles of which my character was composed to excite her interest. Neither did she see much of any one who was likely to compete with me in any respect. Our society, though large, was rather general than intimate; my mother was very averse to the idea of introducing Emily, what she called, _too soon_; and thus, before she mingled with the world, her heart was given never to be recalled.