Your affectionate friend, ELLA. My readers may readily imagine how highly I approved my young friend’s dignified and womanly letter. I had never thought them suited either in years or in tastes. Ella, lovely, sweet, innocent, intelligent, was yet scarcely the companion required by a man of D’Arcy’s intellect and superior mind. Their temperaments, too, were similar, each being outwardly cold, reserved, calm, unimpulsive. Now I have invariably found that the happiest unions proceed from similarity of taste, but diversity of temperament. I was therefore satisfied as to the wisdom of my Ella’s decision. We had now been staying about a fortnight in this lovely place, where D’Arcy, on the plea of very pressing business at Washington, had excused himself from escorting us. He had, however, sent his confidential servant with us, as courier, having telegraphed to his housekeeper to have all in readiness on our arrival at “The Retreat.” And in truth the house was furnished with a luxury only to be attained by the union of refined taste with great wealth in its owner. We discerned the ever-presiding hand of affection in the recently-arrived harp and piano, and in the works of modern literature, and late numbers of periodicals which filled the shelves, and encumbered the tables of the sitting-rooms. Some men never remember anything—D’Arcy had that double memory of heart and head which never forgets the most minute arrangement or least matured intention. Poor Evelyn, humiliated, heart-broken at the wicked deception which had been practiced upon her, loathing her position of reputed wife to such a villain, was glad to hide her burning sense of shame in complete solitude, happy even, that D’Arcy, in respectful sympathy, delicately kept aloof for a time. The latter had not yet replied to Ella’s letter, but in about ten days he wrote to Evelyn a few lines, expressing the fear that business might detain him another month at Washington, but that the moment he could hope for a few days’ recreation, he would visit his friends at “The Retreat.” He hinted a fear that he had alarmed herself and her sweet Ella, and asked pardon if his uncontrollable indignation had caused him to forget for the first time what is due to the presence of ladies. This slight allusion was the only one he made to having received Ella’s letter of dismissal. Strange Being, and unlike all others, I thought!—