with
Lucilla I durst not often talk of herself.

The fond mother and I stood looking with delight on the fair gardeners.
When I had admired their alacrity in these innocent pursuits, their
fondness for retirement, and their cheerful delight in its pleasures,
Mrs. Stanley replied: "Yes, Lucilla is half a nun. She likes the rule,
but not the vow. Poor thing! her conscience is so tender that she
oftener requires encouragement than restraint. While she was making this
plantation, she felt herself so absorbed by it that she came to me one
day and said that her gardening work so fascinated her that she found
whole hours passed unperceived, and she began to be uneasy by observing
that all cares and all duties were suspended while she was disposing
beds of carnations, or knots of anemones. Even when she tore herself
away, and returned to her employments, her flowers still pursued her,
and the improvement of her mind gave way to the cultivation of her
geraniums.

"'I am afraid,' said the poor girl, 'that I must really give it up.' I
would not hear of this. I would not suffer her to deny herself so pure a
pleasure. She then suggested the expedient of limiting her time, and
hanging up her watch in the conservatory to keep her within her
prescribed bounds. She is so observant of this restriction, that when
her allotted time is expired, she forces herself to leave off even in
the midst of the most interesting operation. By this limitation a treble
end is answered. Her time is saved, self-denial is exercised, and the
interest which would languish by protracting the work is kept in fresh
vigor."

I told Mrs. Stanley that I had observed her watch hanging in a
citron-tree the day I came, but little thought it had a moral meaning.
She said it had never been left there since I had been in the house, for
fear of causing interrogatories. Here Mrs. Stanley left me to my
meditations.

It is wisely ordered that all mortal enjoyments should have some alloy.
I never tasted a pleasure since I had been at the Grove, I never
witnessed a grace, I never heard related an excellence of Lucilla,
without a sigh that my beloved parents did not share my happiness. "How
would they," said I, "delight in her delicacy, rejoice in her piety,
love her benevolence, her humility, her usefulness! O how do children
feel who wound the peace of _living_ parents by an unworthy choice, when
not a little of my comfort springs from the certainty that the departed
wo