I do so wish you were here, if it were only to share our misery with us. I did not think that so small a thing as the building of a wretched chapel could have put me out so much, and made me so uncomfortable as this has done. Frank says that it is simply the feeling of being beaten,--the insult not the injury, which is the grievance; but they both rankle with me. I hear the click of the trowel every hour, and though I never go near the front gate, yet I know that it is all muddy and foul with brickbats and mortar. I don't think that anything so cruel and unjust was ever done before; and the worst of it is that Frank, though he hates it just as much as I do, does preach such sermons to me about the wickedness of caring for small evils. 'Suppose you had to go to it every Sunday yourself,' he said the other day, trying to make me understand what a real depth of misery there is in the world. 'I shouldn't mind that half so much,' I answered. Then he bade me try it,--which wasn't fair because he knows I can't. However, they say it will all tumble down because it has been built so badly. I have been waiting to hear from you, but I can understand why you should not write. You do not wish to speak of your cousin, or to write without speaking of him. Your aunt has written to me twice, as doubtless you know, and has told me that you are well, only more silent than heretofore. Dearest Mary, do write to me, and tell me what is in your heart. I will not ask you to come to us,--not yet,--because of our neighbour; but I do think that if you were here I could do you good. I know so well, or fancy that I know so well, the current in which your thoughts are running! You have had a wound, and think that therefore you must be a cripple for life. But it is not so; and such thoughts, if not wicked, are at least wrong. I would that it had been otherwise. I would that you had not met your cousin.-- "So would not I," said Mary to herself; but as she said it she knew that she was wrong. Of course it would be for her welfare, and for his too, if his heart was as hers, that she should never have seen him.--