HOW BESSY PRYOR ANSWERED THE TWO LETTERS, AND WHAT CAME OF IT.

The letters were read very often, and that from Mrs. Miles I think the oftener. Philip’s love was plainly expressed, and what more is expected from a lover’s letter than a strong, manly¹ expression of love? It was quite satisfactory, declaring the one important fact that his happiness was bound up in hers. But Mrs. Miles’ was the stronger letter, and by far the more suggestive. She had so mingled² hardness and softness, had enveloped³ her stern lesson of feminine duty in so sweet a frame of personal love, that it was hardly possible that such a girl as Bessy Pryor should not be shaken by her arguments. There were moments during the night in which she had almost resolved to yield. “A woman can soar only by suffering.” She was not sure that she wanted to soar, but she certainly did want to do her duty, even though suffering should come of it. But there was one word in her aunt’s letter which militated against the writer’s purpose rather than assisted it. “Since you first came to me, you have{168} never been false.” False! no; she hoped she had not been false. Whatever might be the duty of a man or a woman, that duty should be founded on truth. Was it not her special duty at this moment to be true to Philip? I do not know that she was altogether logical. I do not know but that in so supporting herself in her love there may have been a bias⁴ of personal inclination⁵. Bessy perhaps was a little prone⁶ to think that her delight and her duty went together. But that flattering assurance, that she had never yet been false, strengthened her resolution to be true, now, to Philip.

She took the whole of the next day to think, abstaining⁷ during the whole day from a word of confidential⁸ conversation with Miss Gregory. Then on the following morning she wrote her letters. That to Philip would be easily written. Words come readily when one has to give a

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