Mary, I am prejudiced, and I cannot help it. Something tells me my sister will obtain no good from this intimacy, I never did like her, and of late this feeling has increased. Ellen is pleased, too, when her health permits her to join our agreeable little coteries. She appears overcoming her very great reserve, but does not become more lively. She looks always to me, as if she felt a stain yet lingers on her character, and though mamma and papa treat her even more kindly than they did before, if possible, still there are times when to me she appears inwardly unhappy. Strangers would only pronounce her more pensive than usual for her years; for her slight figure and very delicate features, as well as retiring manner, make her appear even younger than she is, but I sometimes fancy I read more. She is always calm and gentle as she used to be, and I never can discover when anything vexes her, except by her heightened colour, which is more easily visible now than when her health was better. I am summoned away, dear Mary, to go with mamma to ride, and as this leaves to night, I must not write more now; but I intend teasing you with letters every week till you write to me, if you are not well, in the sincere wish to arouse you and draw your thoughts from what may be unpleasing subjects: and if you are idle, to spur you to your task. Adieu, my dearest friend. Your ever affectionate EMMELINE. _From Mary Greville to Emmeline Hamilton_. Greville Manor, March 13. How can I thank you sufficiently, my dearest Emmeline, for the affectionate letters which I have received so regularly the last month. I am still so weak that much writing is forbidden me, and therefore to reply to them all as my affection dictates is impossible. But I know your kind heart, my Emmeline; I know it will be satisfied, when I say your letters have indeed cheered my couch of suffering; have indeed succeeded not only in changing _my_ thoughts from the subject that perhaps too much engrosses them, but sometimes even my poor mother's. Your first long letter, dated January, you tell me you wrote to let me know you as you are, that all your faults may be laid bare to my inspection; and what is to be the consequence--that you are, as you said you would be, lowered in my estimation? no, dear and candid girl, you are not, and while you retain such ingenuousness of disposition, you never can be. Wrong you certainly were to encourage such despondency, when so very many blessings were around you; but when once you become sensible of an error, it is already with you corrected. Mamma has, I know, some weeks ago, written to Mrs. Hamilton, to tell her Greville Manor is to be sold. We shall never return to it again; the haunts I so dearly loved, the scenes in which I have spent so many happy hours, all will pass into the hands of strangers,--it will be no longer our own; we shall be no longer together, as for so many years we have been. In