an old man who would he a father under the name of husband, and who, as
such, would merely seek the right of receiving you into his house, and
loving you as his child.'

"He stopped, and refused that day to hear the answer which was already
hovering on my lips. He was the only man among all the visitors of the
house who had evinced any feeling towards me, beyond that vulgar and
almost insolent admiration which shows itself in looks and
exclamations, and is as much an offence as an homage. I knew nothing of
love; I only felt an absence of all family ties which I thought the
tenderness of my adoptive father would replace. I was offered a safe
and honorable refuge against the dangers of the life in which I was to
enter in a few months; and a name which would be as a diadem to the
woman who bore it. His hair had grown white, it was true, but under the
touch of Fame, which bestows eternal youth upon its favorites; his
years would have numbered four times mine, but his regular and majestic
features inspired respect for time, and no disgust for old age, and his
countenance, where genius and goodness were combined, possessed that
beauty of declining age which attracts the eye and affection even of
childhood."

* * * * *

"The very day I quitted forever the Orphan Establishment, I entered my
husband's house, not as his wife, but as his daughter. The world gave
him the name of husband, but he never suffered me to call him anything
but father, and he was such to me in care and tenderness. He made me
the adored and radiating centre of a select and distinguished circle,
composed for the greater part of those old men, eminent in letters,
politics, or philosophy, who had been the glory of the preceding