Maud had been too seriously alarmed about re-opening the box, to hesitate a moment now, as to examining its contents.  The paper was removed, and she began to unfold it slowly, a slight tremor passing through her frame as she did so.  For a single instant she paused to scent the delightful and delicate perfume that seemed to render the interior sacred; then her fingers resumed their office.  At each instant, her eyes expected to meet Robert Willoughby’s well known handwriting.  But the folds of the paper opened on a blank.  To Maud’s surprise, and, for a single exquisitely painful moment, she saw that a lock of hair was all the box contained, besides the paper in which it was enveloped.  Her look became anxious, and her face pale; then the eyes brightened, and a blush that might well be likened to the tints with which the approach of dawn illumines the sky, suffused her cheeks, as, holding the hair to the light, the long ringlets dropped at length, and she recognised one of those beautiful tresses, of which so many were falling at that very moment, in rich profusion around her awn lovely face.  To unloosen her hair from the comb, and to lay the secret of Bob Willoughby by its side, in a way to compare the glossy shades, was the act of only a moment; it sufficed, however, to bring a perfect conviction of the truth.  It was a memorial of herself, then, that Robert Willoughby so prized, had so long guarded with care, and which he called the secret of his life!

It was impossible for Maud not to understand all this.  Robert Willoughby loved her; he had taken this mode of telling his passion.  He had been on the point of doing this in words the very day before; and now he availed himself of the only means that offered of completing the tale.  A flood of tenderness gushed to the heart of Maud, as she passed over all this in her mind; and, from that moment, she ceased to feel shame at the recollection of her own attachment.  She might still have shrunk a little from avowing it to her father, and mother, and Beulah; but, as to herself the world, and the object of her affections, she now stood perfectly vindicated in her own eyes.

That was a precious half-hour which succeeded.  For the moment, all present dangers were lost sight of, in the glow of future hopes.  Maud’s imagination portrayed scenes of happiness, in which domestic duties, Bob beloved, almost worshipped, and her father and mother happy in the felicity of their children, were the prominent features; while Beulah and little Evert filled the back-ground of the picture in colours of pleasing softness.  But these were illusions that could not last, for ever, the fearful realities of her situation returning with the greater consciousness of existence.  Still, Bob might now be loved, without wounding any of the sensitiveness of her sex’s opinions; and dearly, engrossingly, passionately was he rewarded, for the manner in which he had thought of letting her know the true state of his heart, at a moment when he had so much reason to think only of himself.