comes
to her and fills her mind with such exceeding sweet delight, that she
hardly cares for anything except to meditate on him; that she expects,
after a while, to be received up where he is, to be raised up out of the
world and caught up into heaven, being assured that he loves her too
well to let her remain at a distance from him always. Therefore, if you
present all the world before her, with the richest of its treasures, she
disregards it. She has a strange sweetness in her mind, and singular
purity in her affections; and you could not persuade her to do anything
wrong or sinful, if you should give her all the world. She is of a
wonderful sweetness, calmness, and universal benevolence of mind,
especially after this great God has manifested himself to her mind. She
will sometimes go from place to place singing sweetly, and seems to be
always full of joy and pleasure; and no one knows for what. She loves to
be alone, walking in fields and groves, and seems to have some invisible
one always conversing with her."

A shadowy recollection of this description crossed his mind more than
once, as he looked into those calm and candid eyes. Was there, then, a
truth in that inner union of chosen souls with God, of which his mother
and her mother before her had borne meek witness,--their souls shining
out as sacred lamps through the alabaster walls of a temple?

But then, again, had he not logically met and demonstrated, to his own
satisfaction, the nullity of the religious dogmas on which New England
faith was based? There could be no such inner life, he said to
himself,--he had demonstrated it as an absurdity. What was it,
then,--this charm, so subtile and so strong, by which this fair child,
his inferior in age, cultivation, and knowledge of the world, held him
in a certain awe, and made him feel her spirit so unapproachable? His
curiosity was piqued. He felt stimulated to employ all his powers of
pleasing. He was determined, that, sooner or later, she should feel his
power.

With Mrs. Scudder his success was immediate, she was completely won over
by the deferential manner with which he constantly referred himself
to her matronly judgments, and, on returning to the house, she warmly
pressed him to stay to dinner.

Burr accepted the invitation with a frank and almost boyish _abandon_,
declaring that he had not seen anything, for years, that so reminded him
of old times. He praised everything at table,--the smoking brown-b