degree may, to an observing mind, be
recognized in the vivid and impulsive power with which that affection
has operated upon her. If anything could prove this, it is the fervency
with which, previous to the hour of appointment, she bent in worship
before God, to beseech His pardon for the secret interview she was about
to give her lover. And in any other case, such an impression, full of
religious feeling as it was, would have prevented the subject of it
from acting contrary to its tendency; but here was the refined dread of
error, lively even to acuteness, absolutely incapable of drawing back
the mind from the transgression of moral duty which filled it with a
feeling nearly akin to remorse.

Jane that day met the family at dinner, merely as a matter of course,
for she could eat nothing. There was, independently of this, a timidity
in her manner which they noticed, but could not understand.

"Why," said her father, "you were never a great eater, Janie, but
latterly you live, like the chameleon, on air. Surely your health cannot
be good, with such a poor appetite;--your own Ariel eats more."

"I feel my health to be very good, papa; but--" she hesitated a little,
attempted to speak, and paused again; "Although my health is good," she
at last proceeded, "I am not, papa,--I mean my spirits are sometimes
better than they ever were, and sometimes more depressed."

"They are depressed now, Jane," said her mother.

"I don't know that, mamma. Indeed I could not describe my present state
of feeling; but I think,--indeed I know I am not so good as I ought
to be. I am not so good, mamma, and maybe one day you will all have to
forgive me more than you think."

Her father laid his knife and fork down, and fixing his eyes
affectionately upon her, said:

"My child, there is something wrong with you."

Jane herself, who sat beside her mother, made no reply; but putting her
arms about her neck, she laid her cheek against hers, and wept for many
minutes. She then rose in a paroxysm of increasing sorrow, and throwing
her arms about her father's neck also, sobbed out as upon the occasion
already mentioned:--

"Oh, papa, pity and forgive me;--your poor Jane, pity her and forgive
her."

The old man struggled with his grief, for he saw that the tears of the
family rendered it a duty upon him to be firm: nay, he smiled after a
manner, and said in a voice of forced good humor:

"You are a foolish slut, Jane, and play upon us, bec