"Whom is it you love? my own sweet Rosalind!" he said, as he imprinted on her open lips, his first warm kiss of affection. She felt fluttered and confused. It was a dream, redreamt. She again saw the dark full eye, gazing fondly on her; the blushes were again upon her cheeks-cooled, perhaps, by the few months that had since then!—when ?- passed over her. But yet she loved-deeply, and devotedly.

"I do love," she said, with that deep energy, so becoming, and so natural to her. And before they parted, she had confessed that it was her own sweet guardian.

There is a delight in the calm that succeeds a confession of love. We feel like passengers who have taken their place for a long journey; and who, after much sorting, packing, and arranging, have fitted themselves in for the first stage.

Then, perhaps, the first steady glance is

thrown round, to see that they really do fit. But it matters not: etiquette contends that it is then too late to discover any inconveniences. The give and take even then begins. The dove has sought the place to build her nest, and the lawyers set to work immediately to ratify the materials.

Miss Aylmer had more tact and discretion than girls generally possess at her age, and with a warm imagination, she had yet a quick perception of what was due to the position in which she stood, and to that which she had taught herself to expect in matrimony. Even whilst abandoning herself to the soft dreams of a requited love, she never lost sight of the knowledge that she had chosen well. And she would without scruple have broken the chain, however strong, that proved to her she was loving one in any way unworthy.

But the deductions of her reason only served to increase her affection. In every feature he

was true to the early picture she had sketched of what a husband should be; and study and observation of his character only the more confirmed it. After the fulness of her own heart, she weighed him, and she was never tired of the varied forms of man's best nature that she discovered in him. His looks-his actions— his smiles—his sighs his half-sentences- -his silence, and the thousand little shades of character so interesting to her to follow: even his peculiar bluntness all gained a charm in her imagination; and she delighted in the analysis of his feelings, impulses all the nicer shades

and gradations, the vastness of his prowess - his eloquence his wit and above all, his

And above all this, even in her eyes, was the value of the moral character she had to deal with. In him she found exemplified the attributes of being "devout without superstition, and pious without melancholy far from

the infirmity which makes men uncharitable bigots; infusing into their hearts a morose She found, in short,

contempt for others."

that religion enlightened, and reason regulated his conduct. In a word, she found everything in him requisite to make a woman happy.

And now there were duties on her side the

question; chimeras were gone, and she was come to the reality and the arrangement of reason and affection. Vain was it for her lover to entreat her to fix the week-the day! unlike the generality of pretty marriageable misses, it was no trousseau that kept her from deciding; it was the lesson that was yet to be learnt. She felt what was looked for in the wife, and she was resolved to make herself worthy the elevated position her guardian had selected her to fill.

In preference, then, to thinking of lace veils, and orange-flower wreaths, she took a full survey of what was expected from her. She knew

that the "for better and for worse," could even touch her, through the finger of God, notwithstanding her present brilliant circumstances; and she felt what the wife must perform when all is gone. Retrieving from despondency, and indemnifying for the deprivation of all other things, by her own conjugal heroism and constancy. Let the husband be cast out-despised by all, she alone accusing him not, will still be prodigal of consolation. Embracing duties as severe as his reverses - she is always ready to aid, and to help him. There is still one soft pillow left for his aching head-her own tender bosom. Here is the refuge he must. ever find, where remorse becomes appeased, and tears are ever wiped by the hand of affection. Like the proscribed in former days, she taught herself the truth, that it is at the foot of the altar that man finds an asylum against the troubles that beset him.

It was a new light in which she looked upon