dearest girl, you reason too severely. Surely almost all who
love must, in the earliest stages of affection, practice, to a certain
extent, a harmless deception upon their friends, until at least their
love is sanctioned. Marriages founded upon mutual attachment would be
otherwise impracticable."

"No deception, dear Charles, can be harmless. I cannot forget the
precepts of truth, and virtue, and obedience to a higher law even
than his own will, which my dear papa taught me, and I will never more
violate them, even for you."

"You are too pure, too full of truth, my beloved girl, for this world.
Social life is carried on by so much dissimulation, hypocrisy, and
falsehood, that you will be actually unfit to live in it."

"Then let me die in it sooner than be guilty of any one of them. No,
dear Charles, I am not too full of truth. On the contrary, I cannot
understand how it is that my love for you has plunged me into deceit.
Nay more, Charles," she exclaimed, rising up, and placing her hand
on her heart, "I am wrong here--why is it, will you tell me, that our
attachment has crossed and disturbed my devotions to God. I cannot
worship God as I would, and as I used to do. What if His grace be
withdrawn from me? Could you love me then? Could you love a cast-a-way?
Charles, you love truth too well to cherish affection for a being, a
reprobate perhaps, and full of treachery and falsehood. I am not such,
but I fear sometimes that I am."

Her youthful lover gazed upon her as she stood with her sparkling eyes
fixed upon vacancy. Never did she appear so beautiful, her features were
kindled into an expression which was new to him--but an expression so
full of high moral feeling, beaming like the very divinity of truth from
her countenance, yet overshadowed by an unsettled gloom, which gave to
her whole appearance the power of creating both awe and admiration in
the spectator.

The boy was deeply affected, and in a voice scarcely firm, said in
soothing and endearing accents, whilst he took her hand in his,

"Jane, my best beloved, and dearest--say, oh say in what manner I can
compose your mind, or relieve you from the necessity of practising the
deceit which troubles you so much."

"Oh," said she, bending her eye on him, "but it is sweet to be beloved
by those that are dear to us. Your sympathy thrills through my whole
frame with a soothing sensation inexpressibly delightful. It is sweet to
me--for you, Charles, are my only