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WE QUARREL.
55

mine: for you wounded me a little, Lucy. Now, when the pain is gone, I more than forgive: I feel grateful, as to a sineere well-wisher."

"I am your sincere well-wisher: you are right."

Thus our quarrel ended.

Reader, if in the course of this work, you find that my opinion of Dr. John, undergoes modification, excuse the seeming inconsistency. I give the feeling as at the time I felt it; I describe the view of character as it appeared when discovered.

He showed the fineness of his nature by being kinder to me after that misunderstanding than before. Nay, the very incident which, by my theory, must in some degree estrange me and him, changed, indeed, somewhat our relations; but not in the sense I painfully anticipated. An invisible, but a cold something, very slight, very transparent, but very chill: a sort of screen of ice had hitherto, all through our two lives, glazed the medium through which we exchanged intercourse. Those few warm words, though only warm with anger, breathed on that frail frost-work of reserve; about this time, it gave note of dissolution. I think from that day, so long as we continued friends, he never in discourse stood on topics of ceremony with me. He