r was nearly fifty years of age, and looked still older. His life
had been one long fast and penance. Even in youth he had never known a
schoolboy's love for cousin or playmate. He had resolutely closed up his
heart against emotions which he regarded as the allurements of time and
sense. He had made a merit of celibacy, and written and published
against the entanglement of godly ministers in matrimonial engagements
and family cares. It is questionable whether he now understood his own
case, or attributed to its right cause the peculiar interest which he
felt in Margaret Charlton. Left to himself, it is more than probable
that he might never have discovered the true nature of that interest, or
conjectured that anything whatever of earthly passion or sublunary
emotion had mingled with his spiritual Platonism. Commissioned and set
apart to preach repentance to dying men, penniless and homeless, worn
with bodily pain and mental toil, and treading, as he believed, on the
very margin of his grave, what had he to do with love? What power had he
to inspire that tender sentiment, the appropriate offspring only of
youth, and health, and beauty?

"Could any Beatrice see
A lover in such anchorite!"

But in the mean time a reciprocal feeling was gaining strength in the
heart of Margaret. To her grateful appreciation of the condescension of
a great and good man--grave, learned, and renowned--to her youth and
weakness, and to her enthusiastic admiration of his intellectual powers,
devoted to the highest and holiest objects, succeeded naturally enough
the tenderly suggestive pity of her woman's heart, as she thought of his
lonely home, his unshared sorrows, his lack of those sympathies and
kindnesses which make tolerable the hard journey of life. Did she not
owe to him, under God, the salvation of body and mind? Was he not her
truest and most faithful friend, entering with lively interest into all
her joys and sorrows? Had she not seen the cloud of his habitual sadness
broken by gleams of sunny warmth and cheerfulness, as they conversed
together? Could she do better than devote herself to the pleasing task
of making his life happier, of comforting him in seasons of pain and
weariness, encouraging him in his vast labors, and throwing over the cold
and hard austerities of his nature the warmth and light of domestic
affection? Pity, reverence, gratitude, and womanly tenderness, her
fer