poor--for
rigid attention to the religion and morals of people in poverty, and
total neglect of their bodily wants, was the dean's practice. He forced
them to attend church every Sabbath; but whether they had a dinner on
their return was too gross and temporal an inquiry for his spiritual
fervour. Good of the soul was all he aimed at; and this pious
undertaking, besides his diligence as a pastor, required all his exertion
as a magistrate--for to be very poor and very honest, very oppressed yet
very thankful, is a degree of sainted excellence not often to be
attained, without the aid of zealous men to frighten into virtue.

Those, then, who alone felt sorrow at the dean's departure were two young
women, whose parents, exempt from indigence, preserved them from
suffering under his unpitying piety, but whose discretion had not
protected them from the bewitching smiles of his nephew, and the seducing
wiles of his son.

The first morning that Rebecca rose and knew Henry was gone till the
following summer, she wished she could have laid down again and slept
away the whole long interval. Her sisters' peevishness, her father's
austerity, she foresaw, would be insupportable now that she had
experienced Henry's kindness, and he was no longer near to fortify her
patience. She sighed--she wept--she was unhappy.

But if Rebecca awoke with a dejected mind and an aching heart, what were
the sorrows of Agnes? The only child of doating parents, she never had
been taught the necessity of resignation--untutored, unread, unused to
reflect, but knowing how to feel; what were her sufferings when, on
waking, she called to mind that "William was gone," and with him gone all
that excess of happiness which his presence had bestowed, and for which
she had exchanged her future tranquillity?

Loss of tranquillity even Rebecca had to bemoan: Agnes had still more--the
loss of innocence!

Hal William remained in the village, shame, even conscience, perhaps,
might have been silenced; but, separated from her betrayer, parted from
the joys of guilt, and left only to its sorrows, every sting which quick
sensibility could sharpen, to torture her, was transfixed in her heart.
First came the recollection of a cold farewell from the man whose love
she had hoped her yielding passion had for ever won; next, flashed on her
thoughts her violated person; next, the crime incurred; then her cruelty
to her parents; and, last of all, the horrors of detectio