“So nice!—beautiful!—too lovely!—A-a-a-a-h, M-a-r-y! Mary, _let_ me read this aloud? A-a-a-h! No? You goose! A-a-a-h, too beautiful,—too sweet for anything!—I declare I shall be heels over head in love with him myself before— _Grac_ious, what a torrent! What vehemence! Do you know, Mary, he almost frightens me? Well, I have read the letter; and now, miss, be so good as to explain what you mean by scaring people so with your white face and red eyes?” “It is hard,” said Mary, after a pause, and trying to control her voice,—“it is hard to give—up—all—that—love. And such love!” “Give it up! Are you crazy?” “Much nearer than you think. I have scarcely closed my eyes for two nights. I feel that I cannot stand this state of things much longer.” “What dreadful things _does_ he believe, Mary?” “I have no idea.” “Then write and ask him. I feel sure that you could bring him over, you who are so brilliant and all that, you know. I wouldn’t say so to your face, but I don’t care what compliments I pay the back of your head.” Mary turned and laughed. “I am glad,” continued Alice, “I am not a genius with a bee in my bonnet; and let me tell you, there is a gigantic one, of the bumble variety, buzzing, at this very moment, just _here_.” And she rapped Mary’s head with the rosy knuckle of her forefinger. Mary adopted Alice’s suggestion; and there sprang up, between herself and the Don, a correspondence which lasted for two months. Eight or nine weeks of theological discussion between two lovers! Think of it! Ole Virginny nebber tire! Think of it, but tremble not, my reader. Not one line of it all shall you be called on to read. Were I an adherent of the Analytical and Intellectual School, as it is called, of American Novelists, you should have every word of it. Then you would be able to trace the most minute processes of our Mary’s soul, and realize, step by step, how she reached the state of mind to which this correspondence ultimately brought her. But I will spare you; for I am a kind, good Bushwhacker, if ever there was one. Assume, therefore, a hundred pages, or so, of keenest Insight and most Intellectual Dissection, and that we have reached the end of it. Here is where we find ourselves. (No thanks; it would have bored me as much to write it as you to read it.) During these two months Mary has been in a perpetual ferment. She has read all the books of evidential polemics that she could lay her hands on, and her mind has become a very magazine of crushing syllogisms. She has been pouring these out with all that eloquence that love is so sure to lend a woman’s pen. Day by day she has become more thoroughly convinced of the impregnability of her position (just as lawyers’ convictions bloom ever stronger under the irrigation of repeated fees,—retainer, reminder, refresher, convincer). From a trembling doubter she has grown into a valiant knight-errant of the faith, ready to measure lances with all comers.