pressed his
dissatisfaction that nature had not made her as beautiful as she was
good. I will not pause to discuss the delicacy of this and many other
observations that caused poor Jane many secret tears, and sometimes
roused even her gentle spirit to indignation; but affection always
conquered her pride, as her lover still continued to give evidence of
devotion."

"And thus years passed on, the happy future promised to Jane seemed
ever to recede; and slowly the conviction forced itself on her mind
that he whom she had trusted so implicitly was selfish and
vacillating, generous from impulse, selfish from calculation; but he
still seemed to love her, and she clung to him because having been so
long accustomed to his devotedness, she shrunk from being again alone.
In the mean season Mrs. Lynn's health became impaired, and Jane's
duties were more arduous than ever. Morris saw her cheek grow pale,
and her step languid under the pressure of mental and bodily fatigue;
he knew she suffered, and yet, while he assisted them in many ways, he
forbore to make the only proposition that could have secured happiness
to her he pretended to love. His conduct preyed upon the mind of
Jane, for she saw that the novelty of his attachment was over. He had
seen her daily for four years, and while she was really essential to
his happiness, he imagined because the uncertainty of early passion
was past, that his love was waning, and thought it would be unjust to
offer her his hand without his whole heart, forgetting the
protestations of former days, and regardless of her wasted feelings.
This is unnatural and inconsistent you will say, but it is true."

"Four years had passed since Everard Morris first became an inmate of
Mrs. Lynn's, and Jane had learned to doubt his love. 'Hope deferred
maketh the heart sick;' and she felt that the only way to acquire
peace was to crush the affection she had so carefully nourished when
she was taught to believe it essential to his happiness. She could not
turn to another; like the slender vine that has been tenderly trained
about some sturdy plant, and whose tendrils cannot readily clasp
another when its first support is removed, so her affections still
longed for him who first awoke them, and to whom they had clung so
long. But she never reproached him; her manner was gentle, but
reserved; she neither sought nor avoided him; and he flattered himself
that her affection, like his own passionate love, had near