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“One is drawn out towards her, in spite of one’s self, poor thing!”

The upshot of the discussion was that though he had not been directly advised to do it, Raye wrote, in his real name, what he would never have decided to write on his own responsibility—-namely, that he could not live without her, and would come down in the spring and shelve her looming difficulty by marrying her.

This bold acceptance of the situation was made known to Anna by Mrs. Harnham driving out immediately to the cottage on the Plain. Anna jumped for joy like a little child ; and poor, crude directions for answering appropriately were given to Edith Harnham, who on her return to the city carried them out with warm intensifications,

“Oh!” she groaned, as she threw down the pen. “ Anna—poor good little fool—hasn’t intelligence enough to appreciate him. How should she? While I—don’t bear his child !”

It was now February. The correspondence had continued altogether for four months, and the next letter from Raye contained incidentally a statement of his position and prospects. He said that in offering to wed her he had at first contemplated the step of retiring from a profession which hitherto had brought him very slight emolument, and which, to speak plainly, he had thought might be difficult of practice after his anion with her. But the unexpected mines of brightness and warmth that her letters had disclosed to be lurking in ber sweet nature had led him to abandon that somewhat sad prospect. He felt sure that with her powers of development, after a little private training in the social forms of London under his supervision, and a little help from a governess if necessary, she would make as good a profes-