e, 'you intend to go to
heaven without your husband? I know you always retire to your
dressing-room, not only for your private devotions, but to read prayers
to your maids. What have your men-servants done, what has your husband
done, that they should be excluded? Is it not a little selfish, my
Henrietta,' added he, smiling, 'to confine your zeal to the eternal
happiness of your own sex? Will you allow me and our men-servants to
join you? To-morrow is Sunday, we will then, if you please, begin in the
hall. You shall prepare what you would have read; and I will be your
chaplain. A most unworthy one, Henrietta, I confess; but you will not
only have a chaplain of your own making, but a Christian also.'

"'Never, my dear Lucilla,' continued Mrs. Carlton, 'did I know what true
happiness was till that moment. My husband, with all his faults, had
always been remarkably sincere. Indeed, his aversion to all hypocrisy
had made him keep back his right feelings and sentiments till he was
assured they were well established in his mind. He has for some time
been regular at church, a thing, he said, too much taken up as a
customary form to be remarkable, and which therefore involved not much;
but family prayer, adopted from conviction of its being a duty, rather
pledged a man to consistent religion. Never, I hope, shall I forget the
joy I felt, nor my gratitude to that 'Being from whom all holy desires
proceed,' when, with all his family kneeling solemnly around him, I
heard my once unhappy husband with a sober fervor begin:

"'To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgivenesses, though we have
rebelled against him, neither have we obeyed the voice of the Lord our
God, to walk in his laws which he set before us.'

"He evidently struggled with his own feelings; but his manly mind
carried him through with an admirable mixture of dignity and feeling. He
was so serenely cheerful the rest of the evening that I felt he had
obtained a great victory over himself, and his heart was at peace within
him. Prayer with him was not a beginning form, but a consummation of his
better purposes."

The sweet girl could not forbear weeping again while she was giving me
this interesting account. I felt as if I had never loved her till then.
To see her so full of sensibility without the slightest tincture of
romance, so feeling, yet so sober-minded, enchanted me. I could now
afford to wish heartily for Lord Staunton's reformation, because it was
not li