kely to interfere with my hopes. And now the danger was over, I
even endeavored to make myself believe that I _should_ have wished it in
any event, so treacherous will the human heart be found by those who
watch its motions. And it proceeds from not watching them that the
generality are so little acquainted with the evils which lurk within it.

Before I had time to express half what I felt to the fair narrator the
party came in. They seemed as much puzzled at the position in which they
found Lucilla and myself, she wiping her eyes, and I standing by in
admiration, as I had been at her mysterious interview with Mrs. Carlton.
The Belfields knew not what to make of it. The mother's looks expressed
astonishment and anxiety. The father's eye demanded an explanation. All
this mute eloquence passed in an instant. Miss Stanley gave them not
time to inquire. She flew to her mother, and eagerly repeated the little
tale which furnished matter for grateful joy and improving conversation
the rest of the evening.

Mr. Stanley expressed a thorough confidence in the sincerity of Carlton.
"He had always," continued he, "in his worst days an abhorrence of
deceit, and such a dread of people appearing better than they are, that
he even commended that most absurd practice of Dean Swift, who, you
know, used to perform family prayers in a garret, for fear any one
should call in and detect him in the performance." Carlton defended this
as an honorable instance of Swift's abhorrence of ostentation in
religion. I opposed it on the more probable ground of his being ashamed
of it. For allowing, what however never can be allowed, that an ordinary
man might have some excuse for the dread of being sneered at, as wanting
to be thought righteous overmuch; yet in a churchman, in a dignified
churchman, family prayer would be expected as a customary decency, an
indispensable appendage to his situation, which, though it might be
practiced without piety, could not be omitted without disgrace, and
which even a sensible infidel, considering it merely as a professional
act, could not say was a custom

"More honored in the breach than the observance."

CHAPTER XXXVII.

One evening, which Mr. Tyrrel happened to spend with us, after Mr.
Stanley had performed the family devotions, Mr. Tyrrel said to him:
"Stanley, I don't much like the prayer you read. It seems, by the great
stress it lays on holiness, to imply that a man has something in his own