It was a trembling scale that hung balancing in that young girl’s hand that night. On one side, frankness, cheerfulness, manly worth, honest devotion, and a home with every adjunct of peace and prosperity; on the other, love, gratitude, longing, admiration, and a dark shadow enveloping all, called doubt. The scale would not adjust itself. It tore her heart to turn from Mr. Sylvester, it troubled her conscience to dismiss the thought of Mr. Ensign. The question was yet undecided when she rose and began putting away her ornaments for the night. What was there on her dressing-table that made her pause with such a start, and cast that look of half beseeching inquiry at her own image in the glass? Only another envelope with her name written upon it. But the way in which she took it in her hand, and the half guilty air with which she stole back with it to the fire, would have satisfied any looker-on I imagine, that conscience or no conscience, debate or no debate, the writer of these lines had gained a hold upon her heart, which no other could dispute. It was a compactly written note and ran thus: “A man is not always responsible for what he does in moments of great suspense or agitation. But if, upon reflection, he finds that he has spoken harshly or acted unwisely, it is his duty to remedy his fault; and therefore it is that I write you this little note. Paula, I love you; not as I once did, with a fatherly longing and a protective delight, but passionately, yearningly, and entirely, with the whole force of my somewhat disappointed life; as a man loves for whom the world has dissolved leaving but one creature in it, and that a woman. I showed you this too plainly to-night. I have no right to startle or intimidate your sweet soul into any relation that might hereafter curb or dissatisfy you; if you can love me freely, with no back-lookings to any younger lover left behind, know that naught you could bestow, can ever equal the world of love and feeling which I long to lavish upon you from my heart of hearts. But if another has already won upon your affections too much for you to give an undivided response to my appeal, then by all the purity and innocence of your nature, forget I have ever marred the past or disturbed the present by any word warmer than that of a father. “I shall not meet you at breakfast and possibly not at dinner to-morrow, but when evening comes I shall look for my soul’s dearer and better half, or my childless manhood’s nearest and most cherished friend, as God pleaseth and your own heart and conscience shall decree. “EDWARD SYLVESTER.” Miss Belinda was very much surprised to be awakened early the next morning, by a pair of loving arms clasped yearningly about her neck.