The letters came frequently:  for Charles did little else all day but write to Emmy, so as always to be ready with a budget for the next piece of luck—­a home-bound ship.  He had many things to teach her yet, sweet student; and it was a beautiful sight to see how her mind expanded as an opening flower before the sun of tenderness and wisdom.  Each letter, both in writing and in reading, was the child of many prayers:  and even the loveliness of Emily grew more soft, more elevated, “as it had been the face of an angel,” when feeding in solitary joy on those effusions of her lover’s heart.

Of course, he could not hear from her, until the overland mail might haply bring him letters at Madras:  so that, as our Irish friends would say, with all her will to tell him of her love, “the reciprocity must needs be all on one side.”  But Emily did write too; earnestly, happily:  and poured her very heart out in those eloquent burning words.  I dare say Charles will get the letter now within a day or two:  for the roaring surf of Madras is on the horizon, almost within sight.

Nevertheless, before he gets there, and can read those letters—­precious, precious manuscripts—­it will be my painful duty, as a chronicler of (what might well be) truth, to put the reader in possession of one little hint, which seemed likeliest to wreck the happiness of these two children of affection.

I am Emily’s invisible friend:  and as the dear girl ran to me one morning, with tears in her eyes, to ask me what I thought of a certain mysterious paragraph, I need not scruple to lay it straight before the reader.

At the end of a voluminous love-letter, which I really did not think of prying into, occurred the following postscript, evidently written at the last moment of haste.

“Oh! my precious Emmy, I have just heard the most fearful rumour of ill that could possibly befall us:  the captain of our ship—­you will remember Captain Forbes, he knew you and the general well, he said—­has just assured me that—­that—!  I dare not, cannot write the awful words.  Oh! my own Emmy—­Heaven grant you be my own!—­pray, pray, as I will night and day, that rumour be not true:  for if it be, my love, both God and man forbid us ever to meet again!  How I wish I could explain it all, or that I had never heard so much, or never written it here, and told it you, though thus obscurely:  for I can’t destroy this letter now, the ships are just parting company, and there is no time to write another.  Yet will I hope, love, against hope.  Who knows? through God’s good mercy, it may all be cleared up still.  If not—­if not—­strive to forget for ever, your unhappy “CHARLES.

“Perhaps—­O, glorious thought!—­Nurse Mackie may know better than the captain, after all; and yet, he seems so positive:  if he is right, there is nothing for us both but Wo!  Wo!  Wo!”

Now, to say plain truth, when Emily showed me this, I looked very blank upon it.  That Charles had heard some meddlesome report, which (if true) was to be an insuperable barrier to their future union, struck me at a glimpse.  But I had not the heart to hint it to her; and only encouraged hope—­hope, in God’s help, through the means of Mrs. Mackie and her papers.