turned Lady Rachel, "and is often the only reward on this side Heaven for all the virtues to which human nature is equal. Should you attain so high an eminence at twice eighteen, you would be an enviable being."

"But I was always told," said Isabella, "that if I were not wanting to myself, I should be happy."

"That is a phrase I do not understand," said Lady Rachel; "can you explain it to me?"

"I believe," said Isabella, with a conscious dropping of her eyelids, that it means not to suffer myself to be trampled upon."

"Umph!" said Lady Rachel; "well child, go home, and try all these fine maxims upon which your boasted education has been grounded, and when you have proved their worth, return and tell me, and I shall be instructed too,"

This was too much for the mortified Isabella; tears stood in her eyes.

"I will go home," said she, rising, "for I see that you despise me, and where I had hoped to have found a friend, I meet only with the severity of a critic."

"And may not that very severity be an act of the truest friendship ?" returned Lady Rachel ; you tread on breaking ice; shall I be nice in the means that may place you safely on firm ground?"

"That I am in danger I feel," replied Isabella, "but I believe the cause to be in others rather than myself. I may be weak, but when I mean no harm, nor would do any, why should I think my footing insecure ?"

"Away with the imbecility of such sentimental arguing," cried Lady Rachel. "How can you be secure when competition is your religion, pre

eminence your Heaven, degradation your Hell? In the stillness of your chamber, ponder, weigh, and determine whether your religion is holy, your heaven the region of happiness, or your powers of endurance equal to the alternative-if you are satisfied with the course in which you are, pursue it if not, come to me again, and we will endeavour to find one more pure, more safe, more happy. And now for the present farewell; at this moment an angel's tongue would not inform your understanding."

CHAP. XV.

"Methinks in thee some blessed spirit speaks?"

SHAKSPEARE.

ISABELLA withdrew, dissatisfied with Lady Rachel, and angry with herself. In the bravery of her sorrow she had sought the counsel of Lady Rachel, and had boasted to herself that she would not shrink from its severity; but, with the coward petulance of a child, she had dashed the salutary cup from her rather than endure its bitterness. She had pertinaciously defended maxims which her heart con

demned, and she had refused to admit truths which her reason acknowledged. The still small voice within now told her all this, and she was mortified and vexed; but as she was not yet truly humble, she wanted alike the docility and the courage to encounter the consequences of principles that, although she might dispute, she could not doubt. She continued even in her incipient penitence to reason perversely: "Must she submit to be less charming to the senses of her husband, in the hope of being more approved by his reason? - must she be content with deserving his love, and let another enjoy it? could she sacrifice the important present for an uncertain hereafter? and could she resign herself to a passive hopelessness, when the only mitigation to her anguish was in action, in renewed attempts to do herself justice ?"