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210 you do not reply, I presume you have not yet decided that point. We separated, my indignation roused to the highest pitch, and he cold and calm as ever. When we next met, there was no difference in his manners to me that a stranger would have observed; but I perceived his words were all weighed and measured, as if he would not venture soon again to disturb a lion spirit."

"Is this all?" asked Jane.

"Not half," replied Erskine; and after a little hesitation he continued, "I perceive that it is impossible for you to see things in the light I do. Your aunt with her everlasting cant, your methodist friend with her old maid notions, and this precise quaker, above all, have made you so rigid, have so bound and stiffened every youthful indulgent feeling, that I have little hope of a favourable judgment, as a heretic could have had in the dark ages, from his triple-crowned tyrant."

"Then," said Jane, rising, "it is as unnecessary as painful for me to hear the rest."

"No, you shall not go," he replied; "I expect miracles from the touch of love. I think I have an advocate in your heart, that will plead for me against the whole 'privileged order,' of professors—of every cast. Do not be shocked, my dear Jane; do not, for your own sake, make mountains of mole-hills, when I tell you, that the young men of the village instituted a club, three or four months since, who meet once a week socially, perhaps a little oftener, when we are all about home: and"—he hesitated a moment, as one will