tous occasions, they reasoned and felt alike. In
ordinary cases, they separated, as it were, into different tracks; but
this diversity was productive not of jarring, but of harmony.

A romantic and untutored disposition like mine may be supposed liable to
strong impressions from perpetual converse with persons of their age and
sex. The elder was soon discovered to have already disposed of her
affections. The younger was free, and somewhat that is more easily
conceived than named stole insensibly upon my heart. The images that
haunted me at home and abroad, in her absence and her presence,
gradually coalesced into one shape, and gave birth to an incessant train
of latent palpitations and indefinable hopes. My days were little else
than uninterrupted reveries, and night only called up phantoms more
vivid and equally enchanting.

The memorable incidents which had lately happened scarcely counterpoised
my new sensations or diverted my contemplations from the present. My
views were gradually led to rest upon futurity, and in that I quickly
found cause of circumspection and dread. My present labours were light,
and were sufficient for my subsistence in a single state; but wedlock
was the parent of new wants and of new cares. Mr. Hadwin's possessions
were adequate to his own frugal maintenance, but, divided between his
children, would be too scanty for either. Besides, this division could
only take place at his death, and that was an event whose speedy
occurrence was neither desirable nor probable.

Another obstacle was now remembered. Hadwin was the conscientious member
of a sect which forbade the marriage of its votaries with those of a
different communion. I had been trained in an opposite creed, and
imagined it impossible that I should ever become a proselyte to
Quakerism. It only remained for me to feign conversion, or to root out
the opinions of my friend and win her consent to a secret marriage.
Whether hypocrisy was eligible was no subject of deliberation. If the
possession of all that ambition can conceive were added to the
transports of union with Eliza Hadwin, and offered as the price of
dissimulation, it would have been instantly rejected. My external goods
were not abundant nor numerous, but the consciousness of rectitude was
mine; and, in competition with this, the luxury of the heart and of the
senses, the gratifications of boundless ambition and inexhaustible
wealth, were contemptible and frivolous.

The co