nearly made shipwreck of all your peace in this life, by the very system of concealment which you are now madly commencing again. Believe me, that if your love for each other cannot bear the test of a perfectly frank and fearless confession of all your faults, all your mistakes; if it does not rest on truth, perfect truth, its foundation is rotten, and this is but a transient respite from the misery that surely awaits you."

"Can I do this?" said Fanny. "Can I go over the hateful past, and call up those terrible hours, that I am trying to forget?"

Look, Fanny, at the cause of all your misery, and you will find it was not any very wrong thing that either of you did; not a want of love, but it was a want of trust in each other a want of truth. Each was playing a part, till each became convinced that the real character was lost in the assumed one. Your love for each other could not grow, thus smothered and warped; it has barely survived. Could you daily, and, as the Christian wife should, with every passing moment, give thanks, in your heart, to God, for the possession of a friend to whom you are perpetually false ?”

"O, not false, Amy; that is too hard."

"Yes, false, Fanny. You must, in such a relation, be perfectly true in every thing, or you are false."

While Fanny and Amy were talking, Mr. Roberts came in. Fanny unconsciously put the letters, that were lying on the table, out of sight. Her husband observed it, and looked embarrassed and hurt. The ladies were silent, at his entrance.

"I fear that I am an intruder," he said. "You have, perhaps, some private affairs." This was said in a constrained tone; and he rather abruptly left the room.

"He saw me hide these foolish letters, and supposed that there really was some important secret between us," said Fanny, in a fretful tone, and half speaking to herself. "It's a pity he came in."

"And is there not some important secret hidden from your husband?" replied Amy. "Have you not something on your heart, and in your thoughts, which you think you cannot say to him? And can you bear the reality, while you are annoyed and pained at the mere appearance ?

"O, but it was foolish in Roberts to be so troubled by such a trifle. These letters might have related only to your concerns."

"He would naturally wonder, then, why you did not say so why you should hide them. He would know that you could not suppose he would look at any letters unbidden. Were you not afraid that he would recognize your hand-writing?"

"It is true," said Fanny; "and I am sorry they were not burnt immediately.”

"And will you carry that about in your heart, which you would, when on paper, desire to burn, and yet call yourself a true, and loving, and happy wife, Fanny?"

"But I am a true, and loving, and shall be a happy wife, if my husband will not have this foolish, jealous sensitiveness about trifles."

"But the fact is, that he is sensitive, and that you know he is, Fanny. A man like Roberts, whose love is so tender, so refined, so elevated, cannot be satisfied with an affection which would, perhaps, satisfy a coarser mind. He wants an entire love, an entire trust - entire truth. He cannot bear to be doubted, or feared, or separated from his wife, even in trifles."

"I do not fear him. I know that he would forgive me for anything that ought to be forgiven."

"Yes you do, Fanny; you fear that he will discover what you have yet been willing to say to me. I think you have given your husband reason to complain of you, and to be jealous of your affections, within this hour."

"He has never said this to me," replied Fanny, thoughtfully.

"In that he has been wrong, and you should say so to him; but he may have thought that unless this perfect confidence were voluntary it was worth nothing."

"But would you have me tell my husband every thing I say and do, and feel, and have done or said and felt, Amy?"

"Yes, every thing that he can wish to know; nothing is a trifle if he can care for it. You should have but one heart between you."

"How can I be good enough to show my whole foolish heart, my whole whimsical and faulty character to my husband; what will he think when he really sees me as I

am."

"If," replied Amy, "he finds in your heart an entire love for himself, a perfect devotion to truth, and an earnest desire to cure all your faults, to be excellent; if he finds that

you hunger and thirst after perfection, rely upon it that even your faults will form another bond of union between you. There is nothing so touching to a generous mind, as that entire trust, which induces a loving heart to pour out to another all its weaknesses, all its errors, even all its sins. We love each other not so much for what we are as for what we would be. It is that divine beau ideal which each one who aspires after excellence carries within, which is the real being.] Would you hide this from your husband? No, Fanny, I know you would not; and its first and most unquestioned feature is a renunciation of that self-love which would hide or vindicate our follies or our faults."

Fanny made no answer; but her eyes glistened, and Amy thought she saw some noble purpose working in her heart, and she left her. A few moments after, Fanny sent for her husband.

"Are you at leisure?" she said, "I have something I wish to say to you."

"Quite, Fanny; but from your looks I fear it is something painful, and I think excitement is bad for your health.”

"Never mind that," replied Fanny; there are things more important than health, or life,