espect and honour the man I
marry, as well as love him, for I cannot love him without. So set your
mind at rest.'

'I hope it may be so,' answered she.

'I know it is so,' persisted I.

'You have not been tried yet, Helen--we can but hope,' said she in her
cold, cautious way.

'I was vexed at her incredulity; but I am not sure her doubts were
entirely without sagacity; I fear I have found it much easier to remember
her advice than to profit by it;--indeed, I have sometimes been led to
question the soundness of her doctrines on those subjects. Her counsels
may be good, as far as they go--in the main points at least;--but there
are some things she has overlooked in her calculations. I wonder if she
was ever in love.

I commenced my career--or my first campaign, as my uncle calls
it--kindling with bright hopes and fancies--chiefly raised by this
conversation--and full of confidence in my own discretion. At first, I
was delighted with the novelty and excitement of our London life; but
soon I began to weary of its mingled turbulence and constraint, and sigh
for the freshness and freedom of home. My new acquaintances, both male
and female, disappointed my expectations, and vexed and depressed me by
turns; for I soon grew tired of studying their peculiarities, and
laughing at their foibles--particularly as I was obliged to keep my
criticisms to myself, for my aunt would not hear them--and they--the
ladies especially--appeared so provokingly mindless, and heartless, and
artificial. The gentlemen seemed better, but, perhaps, it was because I
knew them less--perhaps, because they flattered me; but I did not fall in
love with any of them; and, if their attentions pleased me one moment,
they provoked me the next, because they put me out of humour with myself,
by revealing my vanity and making me fear I was becoming like some of the
ladies I so heartily despised.

There was one elderly gentleman that annoyed me very much; a rich old
friend of my uncle's, who, I believe, thought I could not do better than
marry him; but, besides being old, he was ugly and disagreeable,--and
wicked, I am sure, though my aunt scolded me for saying so; but she
allowed he was no saint. And there was another, less hateful, but still
more tiresome, because she favoured him, and was always thrusting him
upon me, and sounding his praises in my ears--Mr. Boarham by name,
Bore'em, as I prefer spelling it, for a terrible bore he was: I shudder
st