me studies, the same pleasures, the same
society. 'We took sweet counsel together and went to the house of God as
friends.' He condescendingly overlooked my being five or six years
younger than himself. After his marriage with your excellent mother, the
current of life carried us different ways, but without causing any
abatement in the warmth of our attachment.

"I continued to spend one month every year with him at the Priory, till
I myself married. You were then not more than three or four years old;
and your engaging manners, and sweet temper, laid the foundation of an
affection which has not been diminished by time, and the reports of your
progress. Sedentary habits on the part of your father, and a rapidly
increasing family on mine, kept us stationary at the two extremities of
the kingdom. I settled at the Grove, and both as husband and father have
been happiest of the happy.

"As soon as Lucilla was born, your father and I, simultaneously, formed
a wish that it might be possible to perpetuate our friendship by the
future union of our children."

When Mr. Stanley uttered these words, my heart beat so fast, and the
agitation of my whole frame was so visible that he paused for a moment,
but perceiving that I was all ear, and that I made a silent motion for
him to proceed, he went on.

"This was a favorite project with us. We pursued it however with the
moderation of men who had a settled sense of the uncertainty of all
human things, of human life itself; and with a strong conviction of the
probability that our project might never be realized.

"Without too much indulging the illusions of hope, we agreed that there
could be no harm in educating our children for each other: in inspiring
them with corresponding tastes, similar inclinations, and especially
with an exact conformity in their religious views. We never indulged the
presumptuous thought of counteracting providential dispensations, of
conquering difficulties which time might prove to be inseparable, and,
above all, we determined never to be so weak, or so unjust, as to think
of compelling their affections. We had both studied the human heart long
enough to know that it is a perverse and wayward thing. We were
convinced that it would not be dictated to in a matter which involved
its dearest interests, we knew that it liked to pick out its own
happiness in its own way."

As Mr. Stanley proceeded, my heart melted with grateful love for a
father who, in mak