"What an extended sphere of usefulness will then be mine, and oh! my Albert! what an awful responsibility too will then attach to my situation! I pray daily that I may be enabled to meet it as I ought. What I grudge most is, the time which I am now frequently forced to lose, in being civil to our dull neighbours here; and I do confess that to sit amused by Miss Grimsdale's side, while she talks over the last county ball, or to listen to old Lady Henniker's history of her ménage with becoming patience, is a trial for which no self-complacency in the idea, that I am making a sacrifice to oblige others, does in any degree compensate. But Mamma smiles when she hears me answering _tout a rebours_, and sees my fingers entangling the silks, and tells me afterwards that we are not to live to ourselves, and that in fact to please others, when not neglecting, any positive duty, is a minor virtue. I am sure she is right--but, dear Albert, I feel on such occasions how difficult it is to be good! Mr. Foley, to whom I expressed myself thus the other day, told me, 'I talked a great deal of nonsense, though I was a very charming person altogether,' and ended by asking me seriously--'What wrong I thought it possible I could do, living as I did?' How ignorant he must be of the state of the human heart, not to know that our best efforts are faulty, our purest actions imperfect! I stared at him, and then attempted to explain to him that all our thoughts, words, and actions, are marked with inherent error. He stared at me in return, and, looking at me incredulously, asked 'do you really mean what you say?' "'Most assuredly,' I replied; 'can any one mean otherwise?' Then he looked very grave indeed, sighed heavily, and said, 'it was a sad thing to see one so fair and young imbued with such false ideas--ideas which in the end would make me wretched.' I laughed, as I assured him that it was he that was deceived, and who would be wretched; that as for myself, I was the gayest, happiest creature upon earth; and all I had to dread was, loving the world too well, and seeing it in too fair a light. I had not a corner of my heart, I said, unoccupied, or a minute in the day unemployed; and besides that, my reliance upon God made me feel as if I never could be perfectly unhappy under any circumstances.