make her miserable: the unhappy are apt to affect religion. But you are young and curable, if you can be rescued from this quaker climate and influence."

Edward still rattled on, and seemed a little to dread making the promised communication; but at last, inferring from Jane's seriousness that she was anxious, and impatient himself to have it over, he went on to tell her-that from the beginning of their engagement Mr. Lloyd had undertaken the surveillance of his morals; that if he had not been fortified by his antipathy to Quakers, he should have surrendered his confidence to him.

"No gentleman," he said, "no man of honourable feeling-no man of proper sensibility—would submit to the interference of a stranger-a man not much older than himself-in matters that concerned himself alone; it was an intolerable outrage. If Jane was capable of a fair judgment, she would allow that it was so."

Jane mildly replied, that she could only judge from the facts; as yet she had heard nothing but accusations. Erskine said, he had imagined he was stating his case in a court of love and not of law; but he had no objection, since his judge was as sternly just as an old Roman father, to state facts. He could pardon Mr. Lloyd his eagerness to make him adopt his plans of improvement in the natural and moral world: to the first he might have been led by his taste for agriculture, (which he believed was unaffected) and to the second he was pledged by the laws of holy quaker church.

Still he said none but a Quaker would have thought of meddling with the affairs of people who were strangers to him-however, that might be pardoned: as he said before, he supposed every Quaker was bound to that officiousness, by an oath, or an affirmation, for tender conscience' sake. "But my sweet judge, you do not look propitious,” Erskine continued after this misty preamble, from which Jane could gather nothing but that his prejudices and pride had thrown a dark shadow over all the virtues of Mr. Lloyd.

"I cannot, Erskine, look propitious on your sneers against the principles of my excellent friend."

"Perhaps," replied Erskine tartly, "his practice will be equally immaculate in your eyes. And now, Jane, I beseech you for once to forget that Mr. Lloyd is your excellent friend; a man who bestowed some trifling favours on your childhood, and remember the rights of one to whom. you at least owe your love-though he would neither accept that, nor your gratitude, as a debt."

Jane assured him she was ready to hear any thing and every thing impartially that he would tell her. He replied, that he detested stoical impartiality; that he wished her to enter into his loves and his hates, without expecting a reason in their madness. But since you must have the reason, I will not withhold it. As I told you, I submitted to a thousand vexatious, little impertinences: he is plausible and gentlemanly in his manners, so there was nothing I could resent, till after a con

club had turned the scale; but John might have been misinformed.

Thus, after all her deliberations, Jane re-entered her home, without having come to any decision. Though we believe the opinion of a great moralist is against us, we doubt if "decision of character" belongs to the most scrupulously virtuous.

CHAPTER XIII.

It is religion that doth make vows kept,
But thou hast sworn against religion;
Therefore, thy latter vow against thy first
Is in thyself rebellion to thyself:

And better conquest never canst thou make
Than arm thy constant and thy nobler parts
Against these busy loose suggestions.

KING JOHN.

As Jane entered Mrs. Harvey's door she met her kind hostess just returning from a walk, her face flushed with recent pleasure. "Where upon earth have you been?" she exclaimed. "Ah! if you had gone with me, you would not have come home with such a wo-begone face. Not a word! Well-nothing for nothing is my rule, my dear; and so you need not expect to hear where I have been, and what superb papers have come from New-York, for the front rooms; and beautiful china, and chairs, and carpets, and a fine worktable, for an industrious little lady, that shall be nameless; all quite too grand for a sullen, silent, deaf and dumb school-mistress." She added, playfully, "if our cousin Elvira had been out in such a shower of gold, we should have been favoured

with sweet smiles and sweet talk for one year at least. But there comes he that will make the bird sing, when it won't sing to any one else; and so, my dear, to escape chilling a lover's atmosphere, or being melted in it, I shall make my escape."

Jane would gladly have followed her, but she sat still, after hastily throwing aside her hat, and seizing the first book that she could lay her hands upon, to shelter her embarrassment. She sat with her back to the door.

Edward entered, and walking up to her, looked over her shoulder as if to see what book had so riveted her attention. It chanced to be Penn's "Fruits of Solitude." "Curse on all quakers and quakerism!" said he, seizing the book rudely and throwing it across the room; "wherever I go, I am crossed by them."

He walked about, perturbed and angry. Jane rose to leave him, for now, she thought, was not the time to come to an explanation; but Erskine, was not in a humour to be opposed in any thing. He placed his back against the door, and said, "No, Jane, you shall not leave me now. I have much to tell you. Forgive my violence. There is a point beyond which no rational creature can keep his temper. I have been urged to that point; and, thank Heaven, I have not learnt that smoothfaced hypocrisy that can seem what it is not."

Jane trembled excessively. Erskine had touched the 'electric chain ;' she sunk into a chair, and burst into tears.