A letter is by you, which you regard with strange feelings:  it is yet unopened.  It comes from Laura.  It is in reply to one which has cost you very much of exquisite elaboration.  You have made your avowal of feeling as much like a poem as your education would admit.  Indeed it was a pretty letter,—­promising not so much the trustful love of an earnest and devoted heart, as the fervor of a passion which consumed you, and glowed like a furnace through the lines of your letter.  It was a confession in which your vanity of intellect had taken very entertaining part, and in which your judgment was too cool to appear at all.

She must needs break out into raptures at such a letter; and her own will doubtless be tempered with even greater passion.

It is well to shift your chair somewhat, so that the clerks of the office may not see your emotion as you read.  It would be silly to manifest your exuberance in a dismal, dark office of your instructing attorney.  One sighs rather for woods, and brooks, and sunshine, in whose company the hopes of youth stretch into fulfilment.

We will look only at a closing passage:—­

* * * * *

——­“My friend Clarence will, I trust, believe me, when I say that his letter was a surprise to me.  To say that it was very grateful, would be what my womanly vanity could not fail to claim.  I only wish that I was equal to the flattering portrait which he has drawn.  I even half fancy that he is joking me, and can hardly believe that my matronly air should have quite won his youthful heart.  At least I shall try not to believe it; and when I welcome him one day, the husband of some fairy who is worthy of his love, we will smile together at the old lady who once played the Circe to his senses.  Seriously, my friend Clarence, I know your impulse of heart has carried you away, and that in a year’s time, you will smile with me at your old penchant for one so much your senior, and so ill-suited to your years, as your true friend, LAURA.”

* * * * *

——­Magnificent Miss Dalton!

Read it again.  Stick your knife in the desk:—­tut!—­you will break the blade!  Fold up the letter carefully, and toss it upon your pile of papers.  Open Chitty again;—­pleasant reading is Chitty!  Lean upon your hand—­your two hands, so that no one will catch sight of your face.  Chitty is very interesting,—­how sparkling and imaginative!—­what a depth and flow of passion in Chitty!

The office is a capital place—­so quiet and sunny.  Law is a delightful study—­so captivating, and such stores of romance!  And then those trips to the Hall offer such relief and variety,—­especially just now.  It would be well not to betray your eagerness to go.  You can brush your hat a round or two, and take a peep into the broken bit of looking-glass over the wash-stand.

You lengthen your walk, as you sometimes do, by a stroll upon the Battery,—­though rarely upon such a blustering November day.  You put your hands in your pockets, and look out upon the tossing sea.