so. Where this confidence is absent, the married, even after
wedlock, are two strangers who do not know each other. It should be
so; without this, there can be no happiness. And now, aunt, the best
preservative of female beauty?"

Her aunt smiled, and said: "We may not conceal from ourselves that a
handsome man pleases us a hundred times more than an ill-looking
one, and the men are pleased with us when we are pretty. But what we
call beautiful, what in the men pleases us, and in us pleases the
men, is not skin and hair and shape and colour, as in a picture or a
statue; but it is the character, it is the soul that is within
these, which enchants us by looks and words, earnestness, and joy,
and sorrow. The men admire us the more they suppose those virtues of
the mind to exist in us which the outside promises; and we think a
malicious man disagreeable, however graceful and handsome he may be.
Let a young maiden, then, who would preserve her beauty, preserve
but that purity of soul, those sweet qualities of the mind, those
virtues, in short, by which she first drew her lover to her feet.
And the best preservative of virtue, to render it unchanging and
keep it ever young, is _religion_, that inward union with the Deity
and eternity and faith--is piety, that walking with God, so pure, so
peaceful, so beneficent to mortals.

"See, dear heart," continued the aunt, "there are virtues which
arise out of mere experience. These grow old with time, and alter,
because, by change of circumstances and inclination, prudence alters
her means of action, and became her growth does not always keep pace
with that of our years and passions. But religious virtues can never
change; these remain eternally the same, because our good is always
the same, and that eternity the same, which we and those who love us