CHAPTER XIII. It is religion that doth make vows kept, And better conquest never canst thou make KING JOHN. As Jane entered Mrs. Harvey's door, she met her kind hostess just returning from a walk, her face flushed with recent pleasure. Where upon earth have you been?" she exclaimed. "Ah! if you had gone with me, you would not have come home with such a wo-begone face. Not a word! Wellnothing for nothing is my rule, my dear; and so you need not expect to hear where I have been, and what superb papers have come from New York, for the front rooms; and beautiful china, and chairs, and carpets, and a fine work-table, for an industrious little lady, that shall be nameless; all quite too grand for a sullen, silent, deaf and dumb school-mistress." She added, playfully, " If our cousin Elvira had been out in such a shower of gold, we should have been favoured with sweet smiles and sweet talk for one year at least. But there comes he that will make the bird sing, when it won't sing to : any one else and so my dear, to escape chilling a lover's atmosphere, or being melted in it, I shall make my escape." Jane would gladly have followed her, but she sat still, after hastily throwing aside her hat, and seizing the first book that she could lay her hands upon, to shelter her embarrassment. She sat with her back to the door. Edward entered, and walking up to her, looked over her shoulder as if to see what book had so riveted her attention. It chanced to be Penn's "Fruits of Solitude." "Curse on all Quakers and quakerism!" said he, seizing the book rudely and throwing it across the room; "wherever I go, I am crossed by them." He walked about, perturbed and angry. Jane rose to leave him, for now, she thought, was not the time to come to an explanation; but Erskine was not in a humour to be opposed in any thing. He placed his back against the door, and said, "No, Jane, you shall not leave me now. I have much to tell you. Forgive my violence. There is a point beyond which no rational creature can keep his temper. I have been urged to that point; and, thank Heaven, I have not learnt that smooth-faced hypocrisy that can seem what it is not." Jane trembled excessively. Erskine had touched the 'electric chain;' she sunk into a chair, and burst into tears. "I was right," he exclaimed; "it is by your authority, and at your instigation, that I am dogged from place to place by that impertinent fellow; you have entered into a holy league; but know, Miss Elton, there is a tradition in our family, that no Erskine was ever ruled by his wife; and the sooner the lady who is destined to be mine learns not to interfere in my affairs, the more agreeable it will be to me, and the more safe for herself." Jane's indignation was roused by this strange attack; and resuming her composure, she said, "If you mean that I shall understand you, you must explain yourself, for I am ignorant and innocent of any thing you may suspect me of." "Thank heaven !" replied Erskine, "I believe you, Jane; you know in the worst of times I have believed you; and it was natural to be offended that you should distrust me. You shall know the 'head and front of my offending.' The sins that have stirred up such a missionary zeal in that Quaker saint, will weigh very light in the scales of love." "Perhaps," said Jane gravely, "I hold a more impartial balance than you expect." "Then you do not love me, Jane, for love is, and ought to be, blind; but I am willing to make the trial; I will never have it repeated to me, that 'if you knew all, you would with draw your affections from me.' No one shall say that you have not loved me, with all my youthful follies on my head. I know you are a little puritanical; but that is natural to one who has had so much to make her miserable; the unhappy are driven to religion. But you are young and curable, if you can be rescued from this Quaker influence." Edward still rattled on, and seemed a little to dread making the promised communication; but at last, inferring from Jane's seriousness that she was anxious, and impatient himself to have it over, he went on to tell her-that from the beginning of their engagement, Mr. Lloyd had undertaken the surveillance of his morals; that certainly he had been very civil to him, and possibly, if he had not been fortified by his antipathy to Quakers, he should have surrendered his confidence to him. "No gentleman," he said, "no man of honourable feeling -no man of proper sensibility-would submit to the interfe rence of a stranger-a man not much older than himself-in matters that concerned himself alone; it was an intolerable outrage. If Jane were capable of a fair judgment, she would allow that it was so." Jane mildly replied, that she could only judge from the facts; as yet she had heard nothing but invectives. Erskine said, he had imagined he was stating his case in a court of love, and not of law; but he had no objection, since his judge was as sternly just as an old Roman father, to state facts. He could pardon Mr. Lloyd his eagerness to make him adopt his plans of improvement in the natural and moral world: to the first he might have been led by his taste for agriculture, (which he believed was unaffected,) and to the second he was pledged by the laws of meddling quakerism. Still he said none but a Quaker would have thought of prying into the affairs of people who were strangers to him-however, that might be pardoned; as he said before, he supposed every Quaker was bound to 'bear his testimony,' that he believed was their cant term for their impertinence. "But, my sweet judge, you do not look propitious," Erskine continued after this misty preamble, from which Jane could gather nothing but that his prejudices and pride had thrown a dark shadow over all the virtues of Mr. Lloyd. "I cannot, Erskine, look propitious on your sneers against the principles of my excellent friend." "Perhaps," replied Erskine tartly, "his practise will be equally immaculate in your eyes. And now, Jane, I beseech you for once to forget that Mr. Lloyd is your excellent friend; a man who bestowed some trifling favours on your childhood, and remember the rights of one to whom you at least owe your love-though he would neither accept that, nor your gratitude, as a debt." Jane assured him she was ready to hear any thing and every thing impartially that he would tell her. He replied, that he detested stoical impartiality; that he wished her to enter into his loves and his hates, without asking a reason for them. "But since," he continued, "you must have the reason, I will not withhold it. As I told you, I submitted to a thousand vexations, little impertinences: he is plausible and gentlemanly in his manners, so there was nothing I could resent, till after a contemptible affair between John and the old basket-maker and the Woodhulls, in which I used my humble professional skill to extricate my friends, who had been perhaps a little hasty in revenging the impertinence of the foolish old man. Lloyd was present at the trial before the justice I fancied, from the expression of his face, that he wished my friends to be foiled, and this stung me, and stimulated my faculties. I succeeded in winning my cause in spite of law and equity, for they were both against me; and this you know is rather flattering to one's talents. The Woodhull's overwhelmed me with praises and gratitude. I felt sorry for the silly old man, whom they had very unceremoniously unhoused, and I proposed a small subscription to enable him to pay the bill of costs, &c., which was his only receipt from the prosecution. I headed it, and it was soon made up; but the old fellow declined it with as much dignity as if he had been a king in disguise. It was an affair of no moment, and I should probably never have thought of it again, if Lloyd had not the next day made it the text upon which he preached as long a sermon as I would hear, upon the characters of the Woodhulls; he even went so far as to presume to remonstrate with me upon my connection with them; painted their conduct on various occasions in the blackest colours; spoke of their pulling down the old hovel, which |