You already know something of our habits of life abroad,--wasteful and extravagant beyond all the pretensions of our fortune. It was a difficult thing for me to carry on the semblance of our assumed position so as not to throw discredit upon my family, and at the same time avoid the dis-ingenuousness of such a part. The struggle, from which I saw no escape, was too much for me, and I determined to leave the Morrises and return home,--to leave a house wherein I already had acquired the first steps of the right road in life, and go back to dissipations in which I felt no pleasure, and gayeties that never enlivened! I did not tell you all this at the time, my dear friend, partly because I had not the courage for it, and partly that the avowal might seem to throw a reproach on those whom my affection should shield from even a criticism. If I speak of it now, it is because, happily, the theme is one hourly discussed amongst us in all the candor of true frankness. We have no longer concealments, and we are happy. It may have been that the abruptness of my departure offended Captain Morris, or, possibly, some other cause produced the estrangement; but, assuredly, he no longer cultivated the intimacy he had once seemed so ardently to desire, and, until the event of mamma's misfortune here, he ceased to visit us. And now came the interview I have alluded to! Oh, my dearest friend, if there be a moment in life which combines within it the most exquisite delight with the most torturing agony, it is that in which an affection is sought for by one who, immeasurably above us in all the gifts of fortune, still seems to feel that there is a presumption in his demand, and that his appeal may be rejected. I know not how to speak of that conflict between pride and shame, between the ecstasy of conquest and the innate sense of the unworthiness that had won the victory! Sir Penrhyn thought, or fancied he thought, me fond of display and splendor,--that in conforming to the quiet habits of his mother's house, I was only submitting with a good grace to privations. I undeceived him at once. I confessed, not without some shame, that I was in a manner unsuited to the details of an exalted station,--that wealth and its accompaniments would, in reality, be rather burdens than pleasure to one whose tastes were humble as my own,--that, in fact, I was so little of a "Grande Dame" that I should inevitably break down in the part, and that no appliances of mere riches could repay for the onerous duties of dispensing them. "In so much," interrupted he, with a half-smile, "that you would prefer a poor man to a rich one?" "If you mean," said I, "a poor man who felt no shame in his poverty, in comparison with a rich man who felt his pride in his wealth, I say, Yes." "Then what say you to one who has passed through both ordeals," said he, "and only asks that you should share either with him to make him happy?"