me go to Venice
to mother."

Mrs. Lindsay tightened her arm around the erect slender figure, and
gently stroked back the hair from her temples.

"My dear, you paint your future guardian too grimly. Mr. Palma
is very reserved, rather haughty, and probably stern, but
notwithstanding has a noble character, I am told, and certainly
appears much interested in and kindly disposed toward you. Dear
Peyton liked him exceedingly, and his two letters to me were full of
generosity and kind sympathy. As I believe I told you, his stepmother
resides with him, and her daughter Miss Neville, though a young lady,
will be more of a companion for you than the older members of the
household. Mr. Palma is one of the most eminent and popular lawyers
in New York, is very ambitious, I have heard, and at his house you
will meet the best society of that great city; by which I mean the
most cultivated, high-toned, and aristocratic people. I am sorry that
he has no religious views, habits, or associations, as I inferred
from the remarks of the lady whom I met in Boston, and who seemed
well acquainted with the Palma household. She told me 'none of that
family had any religion, though of course they kept a pew in the
fashionable church.' But, my dear little girl, I hope your principles
and rules of life are sufficiently established to preserve you from
all free-thinking tendencies. Constant attendance at church does not
constitute religion, any more than the _bona fide_ pulpit means the
spiritual Gospel; but I have noticed that where genuine piety exists,
it is generally united with a recognition of church duties and
obligations. The case of books I packed and sent with your trunks
contains some very admirable though old-fashioned works, written by
such women as Hannah More, Mrs. Chapone, Mrs. Opie, and others, to
mould the character of girls, and instruct them in all that is
requisite to make them noble, refined, intelligent, useful Christian
women. Hannah More's 'Lucilla Stanley' is one of the loveliest
portraitures of female excellence in the whole domain of literature,
and you will find some of the passages marked to arrest your
attention. In this age of rapid deviation from the standard rules
that governed feminine deportment and education when I was a
girl, many of the precepts and admonitions penned by the authors
I have mentioned are derided and repudiated as 'puritanical,'
'old-fashioned,' 'strait-laced,' 'stupid and prudish'; but if the