“Yours, in life and death,

“H.  Westfield.”

Tears gushed from the eyes of Anna W——­, as she read the last line of this unlooked for epistle, her whole frame trembled, and her heart beat heavily in her bosom.  It was a long time before she was sufficiently composed to answer the letter.  When she did answer, it was, briefly, thus—­

“Baltimore, June 28, 18—.

“Mr. H. Westfield.

“Dear Sir:—­Had your letter of the 18th, come a week earlier, my answer might have been different.  Now I can only bid you forget me.

“Yours, &c.

Anna.”

“Forget you?” was the answer received to this.  “Forget you?  Bid me forget myself!  No, I can never forget you.  A week!—­a week earlier?  Why should a single week fix our fates for ever.  You are not married.  That I learn from my friend.  It need not, then, be too late.  If you love me, as I infer from your letter, throw yourself upon the magnanimity of the man to whom you are betrothed, and he will release you from your engagement.  I know him.  He is generous-minded, and proud.  Tell him he has not and cannot have your whole heart.  That will be enough.  He will bid you be free.”

The reply of Anna was in these few words.  “Henry Westfield; it is too late.  Do not write to me again.  I cannot listen to such language as you use to me without dishonour.”

This half-maddened the young man.  He wrote several times urging Anna by every consideration he could name to break her engagement with Miller.  But she laid his letters aside unanswered.

An early day for the marriage was named.  The stay of Westfield at the South was prolonged several months beyond the time at first determined upon.  He returned to Baltimore a month after the proposed union of Anna with Miller had been consummated.

Although induced, from the blinding ardency of his feelings, to urge Anna to break the engagement she had formed, this did not arise from any want of regard in his mind to the sacredness of the marriage relation.  So suddenly had the intelligence of her contract with Miller come upon him, coupled with the admission that if his proposal had come a week earlier it might have been accepted, that for a time his mind did not act with its usual clearness.  But, when the marriage of her he so idolized took place, Westfield, as a man of high moral sense, gave up all hope, and endeavoured to banish from his heart the image of one who had been so dearly beloved.  On his return to Baltimore, he did not attempt to renew his acquaintance with Anna.  This he deemed imprudent, as well as wrong.  But, as their circle of acquaintance was the same, and as the husband and brother of Anna were his friends, it was impossible for him long to be in the city without meeting, her.  They met a few weeks after his return, at the house of a friend who had a large company.  Westfield saw Anna at the opposite side of one of the