fully, "you did more justice to the good qualities of a man who has the merit of appreciating yours. Rebecca! the time may, nay must come, when your only earthly resource will be the attachment of Richard Vernon. Do not interrupt me, dearest; if I pain you, it is for your good: but can you believe that your future desolate situation is ever absent from my mind? So young, so beautiful, and so unprotected—Rebecca, I could die in peace if you were the wife of Richard Vernon."
Rebecca rose from her seat on the grass, and, kneeling at her father's side, gazed for a few moments earnestly in his face before she replied.
"And would it content you, my father, to know that you had joined those whom nature hath sundered, O how utterly!—to know that your child was grown old even in her youth?—that she had thoughts she might not utter, hopes she herself must destroy?—that her daily words must be either mean with hypocrisy, or bitter with contention? A home! Is that a home by whose hearth sits coldness, and beneath whose roof is discontent? My father, I cannot love Richard Vernon! and that not for vain dislike to outward look or bearing, but because we have not one opinion, wish, or feeling in common. Even my weak judgment sees the fallacy of that morality which makes sins of innocent pleasures and of harmless employment; which renders the path of duty too rough and too narrow for human foot; and which wastes on vain trifles
