nclair."

Having sealed this letter, she hid it in her bosom, and after delaying
a short time to compose her features, again proceeded to the shrubbery,
where she found the servant waiting. Simple as was the act of handing
him the note, yet so inexpressibly delicate was the whole tenor of her
mind, that the slightest step irreconcilable with her standard of female
propriety, left behind it a distinct and painful trace that disturbed
the equilibrium of a character so finely balanced. With an abashed face
and burning brow, she summoned courage, however, to give it, and was
instantly proceeding home, when the messenger observed that she had
given him the wrong letter. She then took the right one from her bosom,
and placing it in his hands would again have hurried into the house."

"You do not mean, I suppose, to send him back his own note," observed
the man, handing her Osborne's as he spoke.

"No, no," she replied, "give it to me; I knew not--in fact, it was a
mistake." She then received Osborne's letter, and hastily withdrew.

The reader may have observed, that so long as Jane merely contemplated
the affection that subsisted between Osborne and herself, as a matter
unconnected with any relative association, and one on which the heart
will dwell with delight while nothing intrudes to disturb its serenity,
so long was the contemplation of perfect happiness. But the moment she
approached her family, or found herself on the eve of taking another
step in its progress, such was her almost morbid candor, and her timid
shrinking from any violation of truth, that her affection for this very
reason became darkened, as she herself said, by snatches of melancholy
and pain.

It is indeed difficult to say whether such a tender perception of good
and evil as characterized all her emotions, may not have predisposed her
mind to the unhappy malady which eventually overcame it; or whether, on
the other hand, the latent existence of the malady in her temperament
may not have rendered such perceptions too delicate for the healthy
discharge of human duties.

Be this as it may, our innocent and beautiful girl is equally to be
pitied; and we trust that in either case the sneers of the coarse and
heartless will be spared against a character they cannot understand. At
all events, it is we think slightly, and but slightly evident, that
even at the present stage of her affection, something prophetic of her
calamity, in a faintly perceptible