time in
their presence, a dissimulation so much at variance with the opinion she
knew they entertained of her habitual candor. It was, in fact, the first
secret she had ever concealed from them; and now the suppression of it
in her own bosom made her feel as if she had withdrawn that confidence
which was due to the love they bore her. This was what kept her so much
in her own room, or sent her abroad to avoid all that had a tendency
to repress the indulgence of an attachment that had left in her heart a
capacity for no other enjoyment. But in solitude she was far from every
thing that could disturb those dreams in which the tranquility of nature
never failed to entrance her. There was where the mysterious spirit
that raises the soul above the impulses of animal life, mingled with
her being--and poured upon her affection the elemental purity of that
original love which in the beginning preceded human guilt.

It is, indeed, far from the contamination of society--in the stillness
of solitude when the sentiment of love comes abroad before its passion,
that the heart can be said to realize the object of its devotion, and to
forget that its indulgence can ever be associated with error. This is,
truly, the angelic love of youth and innocence; and such was the nature
of that which the beautiful girl felt. Indeed, her clay was so divinely
tempered, that the veil which covered her pure and ethereal spirit,
almost permitted the light within to be visible, and exhibited the
workings of a soul that struggled to reach the object whose communion
with itself seemed to constitute the sole end of its existence.

The evening on which Jane and Charles Osborne met for the first time,
unaccompanied by their friends, was one of those to which the power of
neither pen nor pencil can do justice. The sun was slowly sinking among
a pile of those soft crimson clouds, behind which fancy is so apt to
picture to itself the regions of calm delight that are inhabited by the
happy spirits of the blest; the sycamore and hawthorn were yet musical
with the hum of bees, busy in securing their evening burthen for the
hive. Myriads of winged insects were sporting in the sunbeams; the
melancholy plaint of the ringdove came out sweetly from the trees,
mingled with the songs of other birds, and the still sweeter voice of
some happy groups of children at play in the distance. The light of the
hour, in its subdued but golden tone, fell with singular clearness upon