University of Virginia Library

13. CHAPTER XIII.

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!
Well—nothing 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 body
of quakerism; 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 withdraw 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 apt to affect
religion. But you are young and curable, if
you can be rescued from this quaker climate and
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 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 interference of a stranger—a man
not much older than himself—in matters that concerned
himself alone; it was an intolerable outrage.
If Jane was 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
accusations. 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 holy quaker church.

Still he said none but a Quaker would have thought
of meddling with 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 that officiousness, by an oath, or an
affirmation, for tender conscience' sake. “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 practice
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 expecting a reason in
their madness. But since you must have the reason,
I will not withhold it. As I told you, I submitted
to a thousand vexatious, little impertinences:
he is plausible and gentlemanly in his manners, so
there was nothing I could resent, till after a contemptible

affair between John 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 quickened 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 Woodhulls overwhelmed me with
praises and gratitude. I felt sorry for the silly
old fool, 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 connexion with them,
painted their conduct on various occasions in the
blackest colours, spoke of their pulling down the
old hovel, which had in fact been a mere cumberer
of the ground for twenty years, as an act of
oppression and cruelty; said their habits were all
bad; their pursuits all either foolish or dangerous.
I restrained myself as long as possible, and then
I told him, that I should not submit to hear any
calumnies against my friends; friends who were
devoted to me, who would go to perdition to serve
me. If they had foibles, they were those that
belonged to open, generous natures; they were
open-handed, and open-hearted, and had not
smothered their passions, till they were quite extinguished.
I told him, they were honourable
young men, not governed by the fear that `holds
the wretch in order.' He might have known that
I meant to tell him they were what he was not;
but he seemed quite unmoved, and I spoke more
plainly. I had never, I told him, been accustomed
to submit my conduct to the revision of any
one; that he had no right, and I knew not why he
presumed, to assume it, to haunt me like an external
conscience; that my `genius was not rebuked
by his,' neither would it be, if all the marvellous
light of all his brethren was concentrated in
his luminous mind.”

“Oh, Erskine, Erskine!” exclaimed Jane, “was
this your return for his friendly warning?”

“Hear me through, Jane, before you condemn
me. He provoked me more than I have told you.
He said that I was responsible to you for my virtue;
that I betrayed your trust by exposing myself
to be the companion, or the prey, of the vices
of others. Would you have had me borne this,
Jane? Would you thank me for allowing, that he
was more careful of your happiness than I am?”
—“Well,” added he, after a moment's pause, “as

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 as 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

when he comes to a ditch and is uncertain whether
to spring over, to retreat, or to find some
other way; but he had too much pride to conceal
the fact, and though he feared a little to announce
it, yet he was determined to justify it. Jane was
still mute, and he went on—“We play cards;
sometimes we have played later and higher perhaps
than we should if we had all been in the
leading-strings of prudence; all been bred quakers.
Our club are men of honour and spirit,
high-minded gentlemen; a few disputes, misunderstandings,
might arise now and then, as they
will among people who do not weigh every word,
lest they should chance to have an idle one to
account for; but, till the last evening, we have,
in the main, spent our time together as whole-souled
fellows should, in mirth and jollity. As I
said, last evening unfortunately—”

“Tell me nothing more, Mr. Erskine; I have
heard enough,” interrupted Jane.

“What! you will not listen to friend Lloyd's reproaches;
not listen to what most roused his holy
indignation?”

“I have no wish to hear any thing further,” replied
Jane. “I have heard enough to make my
path plain before me. I loved you, Edward; I
confessed to you that I did.”

“And you do not any longer?”

“I cannot; the illusion has vanished. Neither
do you love me.” Edward would have interrupted
her, but she begged him to hear her, with a
dignified composure, that convinced him this was

no sudden burst of resentment, no girlish pique
that he might sooth with flattery and professions.
“A most generous impulse, Edward, led you to
protect an oppressed orphan; and I thought the
devotion of my heart and my life were a small
return to you. It is but a few months since. Is
not love an engrossing passions? But what sacrifices
have you made to it? Oh, Edward! if in
the youth and spring of your affection, I have not
had more power over you, what can I hope from
the future?”

“Hope!—believe every thing, Jane. I will be
as plastic as wax, in your hands. You shall mould
me as you will.”

“No, Edward; I have tried my power over
you, and found it wanting. Broken confidence
cannot be restored.”

“Jane, you are rash; you are giving up independence—protection.
If you reject me, who
will defend you from your aunt? Do you forget
that you are still in her power?”

“No,” replied Jane; “but I have the defence
of innocence, and I do not fear her. It was
not your protection, it was not independence I
sought, it was a refuge in your affection;—that
has failed me. Oh, Edward!” she continued, rising,
“examine your heart as I have examined mine,
and you will find the tie is dissolved that bound us;
there can be no enduring love without sympathy;
our feelings, our pursuits, our plans, our inclinations,
are all diverse.”

“You are unkind, ungrateful, Jane.”

“I must bear that reproach as I can; but I do
not deserve it, Mr. Erskine.”

Erskine imagined he perceived some relenting
in the faltering of her voice, and he said, “Do not
be implacable, Jane; you are too young, too beautiful,
to treat the follies of youth as if they were incurable;
give me a few months probation, I will
do any thing you require; abandon the club, give
up my friends.”

Jane paused for a moment, but there was no
wavering in her resolution—“No, Mr. Erskine;
we must part now; if I loved you, I could not resist
the pleadings of my heart.”

Erskine entreated—promised every thing; till
convinced that Jane did not deceive him or herself,
his vanity and pride, mortified and wounded,
came to his relief, and changed his entreaties to
sarcasms. He said the rigour that would immolate
every human feeling, would fit her to be the Elect
Lady of a Shaker society; he assured her that he
would emulate her stoicism.

“I am no stoic,” replied Jane; and the tears
gushed from her eyes. “Oh, Erskine! I would
make any exertions, any sacrifices to render you
what I once thought you. I would watch and toil
to win you to virtue—to heaven. If I believed
you loved me, I could still hope, for I know that
affection is self-devoting, and may overcome all
things. Edward,” she continued, with a trembling
voice, “there is one subject, and that nearest to
my heart, on which I discovered soon after our engagement
we were at utter variance. When I

first heard you trifle with the obligations of religion,
and express a distrust of its truths, I felt my
heart chill. I reproached myself bitterly for having
looked on your insensibility on this subject as
the common carelessness of a gay young man, to
be expected, and forgiven, and easily cured.
These few short months have taught me much;
have taught me, Erskine, not that religion is the only
sure foundation of virtue—that I knew before—
but they have taught me, that religion alone can
produce unity of spirit; alone can resist the cares,
the disappointments, the tempests of life; that it
is the only indissoluble bond—for when the silver
chord is loosed, this bond becomes immortal. I
have felt that my most sacred pleasures and hopes
must be solitary.” Erskine made no reply; he
felt the presence of a sanctified spirit. “You
now know all, Erskine. The circumstances you
have told me this evening, I partly knew before.”

“From Lloyd?” said Edward. “He then knew,
as he insinuated, why the `treasure of your cheek
had faded.' ”

“You do him wrong. He has never mentioned
your name since the morning I left my aunt's. I
heard them, by accident, from John.”

“It is, in truth, time we should part, when you
can give your ear to every idle rumour;” he snatched
his hat, and was going.

Jane laid her hand on his arm, “Yes, it is time,”
she said, “that we should part; but not in anger.
Let us exchange forgiveness, Edward.” Erskine
turned and wept bitterly. For a few gracious moments

his pride, his self-love, all melted away, and
he felt the value, the surpassing excellence of the
blessing he had forfeited. He pressed the hand
Jane had given him, to his lips fervently, “Oh,
Jane,” he said, “you are an angel; forget my follies,
and think of me with kindness.”

“I shall remember nothing of the past,” she
said, with a look that had `less of earth in it than
heaven,' “but your goodness to me—God bless
you, Edward; God bless you,” she repeated, and
they separated—for ever!

For a few hours Erskine thought only of the irreparable
loss of Jane's affections. Every pure,
every virtuous feeling he possessed, joined in a
clamorous tribute to her excellence, and in a sentence
of self-condemnation that could not be silenced.
But Edward was habitually under the
dominion of self-love, and every other emotion
soon gave place to the dread of being looked upon
as a rejected man. He had not courage to risk
the laugh of his associates, or what would be much
more trying, their affected pity; and to escape it
all, he ordered his servant to pack his clothes,
and make the necessary preparations for leaving
the village in the morning, in the mail-stage for
New-York. He was urged to this step too, by
another motive, arising from a disagreeable affair
in which he had been engaged—the affair which
had induced Mr. Lloyd to make a second attempt
to withdraw him from his vicious associates. At
a recent meeting of the club, the younger Woodhull
had introduced a gentleman who pretended to

be a Mr. Rivington, from Virginia. Woodhull
had met him at Saratoga Springs. They were kindred
spirits, and, forming a sudden friendship, Rivington
promised Woodhull that, after he had exhausted
the pleasures of the Springs, he would
come to—, and pass a few days with him
before his return to Virginia. Rivington was
a fit companion for his new friend; addicted to a
score of vices; gambling high, and out-drinking,
out-swearing, and out-bullying his comrades. Edward
was certainly far better than any other member
of this precious association. He was, from the
first, disgusted with the stranger, with his gross
manners, and with his manifest indisposition to
pay to him the deference he was accustomed to
receive from the rest of the company. The club
sat later than usual. Rivington's passions became
inflamed by the liquor he had drank. A dispute
arose about the play. Erskine and John Woodhull
were partners. Rivington accused Woodhull of unfair
play. Edward defended his partner. A violent
altercation ensued between them. The lie
was given and retorted in so direct a form as to
afford ample ground for an honourable adjustment
of the dispute.

Rivington said, “If he had to deal with a Virginian—a
man of honour—the quarrel might be
settled in a gentlemanly way; but a snivling cowardly
Yankee had no honour to defend. Edward
was provoked to challenge him; and arrangements
were made for the meeting at day-light in the
morning, in a neighbouring wood, which had never

been disturbed by a harsher sound than a
sportman's gun. The brothers were to act as seconds.

The parties were all punctual to their appointment.
The morning of which they were going to
make so unhallowed a use, was a most beautiful
one. Nature was in a poetic mood; in a humour
to give her votaries an opportunity to diversify
her realities with the bright creations of their imaginations.
The vapour had diffused itself over
the valley, so that from the hill, which was the
place of rendezvous, it appeared like a placid
lake, that no `breeze was upon;' from whose bosom
rose the green spires of the poplar, rich masses
of maple foliage, and the graceful and widely
spreading boughs of the elm—

and sent her morning greetings to the white cliffs of
the southern mountain,—brightened the mist that
filled the deep indenting dells between the verdant
heights, resembling them to island hills, and sending
such a flood of light upon the western slopes, that
they shone as if there had been a thousand streams
there rejoicing in the sunbeams. But this appeal
of Nature was unheeded and unnoticed by
these rash young men. Her sacred volume is a
sealed book to those who are inflamed by passion,
or degraded by vice.

The ground was marked out, the usual distance
prescribed by the seconds, and the principals were

just about to take their stations, when they were
interrupted by Mr. Lloyd, who, in returning from
his morning walk, passed through this wood, which
was within a short distance of his house. On
emerging from the thick wood, into the open
space selected by the young men, they were directly
before him, so that it was impossible for
him to mistake the design of their meeting.

“Confusion!” exclaimed Edward; mortified
that Mr. Lloyd, of all men living, should have
witnessed this scene; and then turning to him, for
Mr. Lloyd was approaching him, “To what, Sir,”
said he haughtily, “do we owe the favour of your
company?”

“Purely to accident, Mr. Erskine, or, I should
say, to Providence, if I may be so happy as to
prevent a rash violation of the laws of God and
man.”

“Stand off, Sir!” said Edward, determined now
to brave Mr. Lloyd's opposition, “and witness, if
you will, for you shall not prevent a brave encounter.”

Mr. Lloyd had interposed himself between Edward
and his adversary, and he did not move from
his station. “Brave encounter!” he replied,
pointing with a smile of contempt to Rivington,
who was shaking as if he had an ague; “that
young man's pale cheeks and trembling limbs do
not look like `impostors to true fear;' they do
not promise the merit of bravery to your encounter,
Mr. Erskine.”

“The devil take the impertinent fellow!” exclaimed
the elder Woodhull, (Edward's second);
“proceed to your business, gentlemen.”

Erskine placed himself in an attitude to fire,
and raised his arm. Mr. Lloyd remained firm and
immoveable. “Do you mean to take my fire,
Sir?” asked Erskine. “If you continue to stand
there, the peril be upon yourself; the fault rests
with you.”

“I shall risk taking the fire, if you dare risk
giving it,” replied Mr. Lloyd, coolly.

“Curse him!” said Woodhull, “he thinks you
are afraid to fire.”

This speech had the intended effect upon Erskine.
“Give us the signal,” he said, hastily.

The signal was given, and Edward discharged
his pistol. The ball grazed Mr. Lloyd's arm, and
passed off without any other injury. “It was
bravely done,” said he, with a contemptuous coolness,
that increased, if any thing could increase the
shame Erskine felt, the moment he had vented his
passion by the rash and violent act. “We have
been singularly fortunate,” he continued, “considering
thou hadst all the firing to thyself, and two
fair marks. Poor fellow!” he added, turning to
Rivington, “so broad a shield as I furnished for
thee, I should have hoped would have saved some
of this fright.”

John Woodhull had perceived that his friend's
courage, which, the preceding evening, had been
stimulated by the liquor, had vanished with the fog
that clouded his reason; and ever since they came

on the battle-ground, he had been vainly endeavouring
to screw him up to the sticking point, by
suggesting, in low whispers, such motives as he
thought might operate upon him; but all his efforts
were ineffectual. Rivington was, to use a
vulgar expression, literally `scared out of his
wits.' When the signal was given for firing, he
had essayed to raise his arm, but it was all unstrung
by fear, and he could not move it. The
sound of Erskine's pistol completed his dismay;
he sunk on his knees, dropped his pistol, said he
was willing to own he was no gentleman; he
would beg Mr. Erskine's pardon, and all the gentlemen's
pardon; he would do any thing almost
the gentlemen would say.

John Woodhull felt his own reputation implicated
by his principal's cowardice; and passionate
and reckless, he seized the pistol, and would have
discharged the contents at Rivington; but Mr.
Lloyd, seeing his intention, caught hold of his arm,
wrenched the pistol from him, fired it in the air,
and threw it from him. “Shame on thee, young
man!” he exclaimed, “does the spirit of murder
so possess thee, that it matters not whether thy
arm is raised against friend or foe?”

“He is no friend of mine,” replied Woodhull,
vainly endeavouring to extricate himself from Mr.
Lloyd's manly grasp; he is a coward, and by my
life and sacred honour!”—

“Oh, Mr. Woodhull! sir,” interrupted Rivington,
“I am your friend, sir, and all the gentlemen's
friend, sir. I am much obliged to you, sir,” turning

to Mr. Lloyd, who could not help laughing at
the eagerness of his cowardice; “I am sorry for
the disturbance, gentlemen, and I wish you all a
good morning, gentlemen!” and so saying, he
walked off the ground as fast as his trembling
limbs could take him.

Mr. Lloyd now released young Woodhull from
his hold; and winding his handkerchief around his
arm, which was slightly bleeding, he said, “I perceive,
gentlemen, there is no further occasion for
my interposition. I think the experience of this
morning will not tempt you to repeat this singular
disturbance of the peace of this community.”

The party were all too thoroughly mortified to
attempt a reply, and they separated. Erskine
felt a most humiliating consciousness of his disgrace,
but he had not sufficient magnanimity to
confess it, nor even to express a regret that he had
wounded a man, who exposed his life to prevent
him from committing a crime. The Woodhulls
were deprived of the pitiful pleasure of sneering
at Mr. Lloyd's want of courage. The younger
brother's arm still ached from his experience of
Mr. Lloyd's physical strength; and they all felt
the inferiority of their boastful, passionate, and
reckless fool-hardiness, to the collected, disinterested
courage of a peaceful man, who had risked
his life in their quarrel.

To fill up the measure of their mortification,
Rivington had not left the village two hours, before
several persons arrived there in pursuit of him.
They informed his new friends, that he was not a

Virginian, a name that passes among our northern
bloods as synonymous with gentility, high-mindedness,
noble-daring, and other youthful virtues, but
that he was a countryman of their own, a celebrated
swindler, who had lived by his wits, ascending
by regular gradations through the professions of
hostler, dancing-master, and itinerant actor; and
that having lately, by cleverness in managing the
arts of his vocation, possessed himself of a large
sum of money, he had made his debût as gentleman
at the Springs.

After the events of the morning, Mr. Lloyd felt
more anxiety than ever on Jane Elton's account;
and never weary in well-doing, he determined to
make one more effort to rescue Erskine from the
pernicious society and influence of the Woodhulls.
He solicited an interview with him; and without
alluding to the events of the morning, he remonstrated
warmly and kindly against an intimacy, of
which the degradation and the danger were too
evident to need pointing out. He trusted himself
to speak of Jane, of her innocence, her purity,
her trustful affection, her solitariness, her dependance.

At any other time, we cannot think Edward
would have been unmoved by the eloquence of
his appeal; but now he was exasperated by the
mortifications of the morning; and when Mr. Lloyd
said, “Erskine, if Jane Elton knew all, would she
not withdraw her affections from thee?” he replied,
angrily, “She shall know all. I have a right to
expect she will overlook a few foibles; such as

belong to every man of spirit. She owes me, at
least, so much indulgence. She is bound to me
by ties that cannot be broken—that she certainly
cannot break.” He burst away from Mr. Lloyd,
and went precipitately to Mrs. Harvey's, where
the explanation we have related ensued, and
put a final termination to their unequal alliance.

The speculations of villagers are never at rest
till they know the wherefore of the slightest movements
of the prominent personages that figure on
their theatre. Happily for our heroine, who
was solicitous for a little while to be sheltered
from the scrutiny and remarks of her neighbours,
the affair of the duel soon became public, and sufficiently
accounted for Erskine's abrupt departure.

Jane would have communicated to Mary, her
kind, constant friend Mary Hull, the issue of her
engagement; but it so happened, that she was at
this time absent on a visit to her blind sister.
She felt it to be just, that she should acquaint Mr.
Lloyd with the result of an affair, in which he had
manifested so benevolent and vigilant a care for
her happiness. Perhaps she felt a natural wish,
that he should know his confidence in her had
not been misplaced. She could not speak to him
on the subject, for their intercourse had been suspended
of late; and besides, she was habitually
reserved about speaking of herself. She sat down
to address a note to him; and, after writing a dozen,
each of which offended her in some point—

either betrayed a want of delicacy towards Erskine,
or a sentiment of self-complacency—either
expressed too much, or too little—she threw them
all into the fire, and determined to leave the communication
to accident.