assure you."

"Inez, one of your faith can never be sure of anything; let me entreat
you not to go to the convent. You need recreation, and had much better
mount your pony, and canter a couple of miles every morning; it would
insure a more healthful state of both body and mind."

"I must go, Dr. Bryant."

"Well then, good-by, if you must, yet I fear you will not return
looking any better."

"Adios," and they parted.

Inez's eye followed the retreating form till an adjoining corner
intervened. Then pressing her hand on her heart, as if to still some
exquisite pain, she murmured in saddened tones--"Oh! I would lay down
my life for your love, yet it is lavished on one who has no heart to
give in return. Oh, that I may one day be able to serve you!"

At the moment she perceived Manuel Nevarro crossing the Plaza, and
drawing closer the mantilla, she hastened homeward.

CHAPTER IX.

"A perfect woman, nobly planned;
To warn, to counsel, to command,
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Prudence, foresight, strength, and skill."

WORDSWORTH.

The beautiful ideal of Wordsworth seemed realized in Mrs. Carlton. She
was by nature impetuous, and even irritable; but the careful training
of her deeply pious mother early eradicated these seeds of discord and
future misery. She reared her "in the way she should go," and taught
her to "remember her Creator in the days of her youth." Crushing
vanity, which soon rose hydra-headed in her path, she implanted in her
daughter's heart a sense of her own unworthiness, and led her to the
"fountain of light and strength."

Under her judicious care, Ellen's character was molded into perfect
beauty. She became a Christian, in the purest sense of the term. Hers
were not the gloomy tenets of the anchorite, which, with a sort of
Spartan stoicism, severs every tie enjoined by his great Creator, bids
adieu to all of joy that earth can give, and becomes a devotee at the
shrine of some canonized son of earth, as full of imperfections as
himself. Neither did she hold the lighter and equally dangerous creed
of the latitudinarian. Her views were of a happy medium; liberal, yet
perfectly orthodox.

Ellen married early in life, and many were the trials which rose up
to test her fortitude, and even her reliance on almighty God. Of six
beautiful children that blessed her union, four went down to an early
tomb. Though bowed to the earth by the weight of her affliction, she
murmu