could admire was sure to be stamped with the impress of the noble, the
lovely, or the true!

But Evelyn had faults,--the faults of her age; or, rather, she had
tendencies that might conduce to error. She was of so generous a nature
that the very thought of sacrificing her self for another had a charm.
She ever acted from impulse,--impulses pure and good, but often rash and
imprudent. She was yielding to weakness, persuaded into anything, so
sensitive, that even a cold look from one moderately liked cut her to the
heart; and by the sympathy that accompanies sensitiveness, no pain to her
was so great as the thought of giving pain to another. Hence it was that
Vargrave might form reasonable hopes of his ultimate success. It was a
dangerous constitution for happiness! How many chances must combine to
preserve to the mid-day of characters like this the sunshine of their
dawn! The butterfly that seems the child of the summer and the
flowers--what wind will not chill its mirth, what touch will not brush
away its hues?



CHAPTER II.

THESE, on a general survey, are the modes
Of pulpit oratory which agree
With no unlettered audience.--POLWHELE.

MRS. LESLIE had returned from her visit to the rectory to her own home,
and Evelyn had now been some weeks at Mrs. Merton's. As was natural, she
had grown in some measure reconciled and resigned to her change of abode.
In fact, no sooner did she pass Mrs. Merton's threshold, than, for the