at you would be
very good-natured to me, but I am afraid that I should not like you
unless you were good-tempered too." "But, ma'am, by good-natured I mean
good-tempered--it's all the same thing." "No, indeed, I understand by
them two very different things. You are good-natured, Cecilia, for you
are desirous to oblige and serve your companions, to gain them praise
and save them from blame, to give them pleasure, and to relieve them
from pain; but Leonora is good-tempered, for she can bear with their
foibles, and acknowledge her own. Without disputing about the right, she
sometimes yields to those who are in the wrong. In short, her temper is
perfectly good, for it can bear and forbear."

"I wish that mine could," said Cecilia, sighing.

"It may," replied Mrs. Villars; "but it is not wishes alone which can
improve us in any thing. Turn the same exertion and perseverance which
have won you the prize to-day to this object, and you will meet with the
same success; perhaps not on the first, the second, or the third
attempt, but depend upon it that you will at last; every new effort will
weaken your bad habits and strengthen your good ones. But you must not
expect to succeed all at once; I repeat it to you, for habit must be
counteracted by habit. It would be as extravagant in us to expect that
all our faults could be destroyed by one punishment, were it ever so
severe, as it was in the Roman emperor we were reading of a few days ago
to wish that all the heads of his enemies were upon one neck, that he
might cut them off by one blow."

Here Mrs. Villars took Cecilia by the hand, and they began to walk home.
Such was the nature of Cecilia's mind, that, when any object was
forcibly impressed on her imagination, it caused a temporary suspension
of her reasoning faculties. Hope was too strong a stimulus for her
spirits; and when fear did take possession of her mind, it was attended
with total debility. Her vanity was now as much mortified as in the
morning it had been elated. She walked on with Mrs. Villars in silence
until they came under the shade of the elm-tree walk, and then, fixing
her eyes upon Mrs. Villars, she stopped short. "Do you think, madam,"
said she, with hesitation, "do you think, madam, that I have a bad
heart?"

"A bad heart, my dear! why, what put that into your head?"

"Leonora said that I had, ma'am, and I felt ashamed when she said so."

"But, my dear, how can Leonora tell whether your heart be good o