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112 purposes of life. How different is the lot of a girl condemned from childhood upwards to struggle in this wide and weary world! Bitter, indeed, is the fruit of the tree of knowledge to her; at the expense of how many kind and beautiful feelings must that knowledge be obtained; how often will the confidence be betrayed, and the affection misplaced; how often will the aching heart turn on itself for comfort, and in vain; for, under its first eager disappointment, youth wonders why its kindliness and its generous emotions have been given, if falsehood and ingratitude be their requital. How often will the right and the expedient contend together, while the faults of others seem to justify our own, and the low, but distinct voice within us, be half lost, while listening to the sophistry of temptation justifying itself by example; yet how many nobly support the trial, while they have learned of difficulties to use the mental strength which over comes them, and have been taught by errors to rely more decidedly on the instinctive sense of right which at once shrinks from their admission.

What to Diana Vernon was the craft and crime of one like Rashleigh, which her own native purity would at once detect and shun—as the dove feels and flies from the hawk before the shadow of his dark wings be seen on the air? What the desolate loneliness of the old hall, and the doubts and fears