Although the care and wisdom of Mrs. Wilson had prohibited the admission of any romantic or enthusiastic expectations of happiness into the day-dreams of her charge, yet the buoyancy of health, of hope, of youth, of innocence, had elevated Emily to a height of enjoyment hitherto unknown to her usually placid and disciplined pleasures.  Denbigh certainly mingled in most of her thoughts, both of the past and the future, and she stood on the threshold of that fantastic edifice in which Jane ordinarily resided.  Emily was in the situation perhaps the most dangerous to a young female Christian:  her heart, her affections, were given to a man, to appearance, every way worthy of possessing them, it is true but she had admitted a rival in her love to her Maker; and to keep those feelings distinct, to bend the passions in due submission to the more powerful considerations of endless duty, of unbounded gratitude, is one of the most trying struggles of Christian fortitude.  We are much more apt to forget our God in prosperity than adversity.  The weakness of human nature drives us to seek assistance in distress; but vanity and worldly-mindedness often induce us to imagine we control the happiness we only enjoy.

Sir Edward and Lady Moseley could see nothing in the prospect of the future but lives of peace and contentment for their children.  Clara was happily settled, and her sisters were on the eve of making connexions with men of family, condition, and certain character.  What more could be done for them?  They must, like other people, take their chances in the lottery of life; they could only hope and pray for their prosperity, and this they did with great sincerity.  Not so Mrs. Wilson:  she had guarded the invaluable charge intrusted to her keeping with too much assiduity, too keen an interest, too just a sense of the awful responsibility she had undertaken, to desert her post at the moment watchfulness was most required.  By a temperate, but firm and well-chosen conversation she kept alive the sense of her real condition in her niece, and labored hard to prevent the blandishments of life from supplanting the lively hope of enjoying another existence.  She endeavored, by her pious example, her prayers, and her Judicious allusions, to keep the passion of love in the breast of Emily secondary to the more important object of her creation; and, by the aid of a kind and Almighty Providence, her labors, though arduous, were crowned with success.

As the family were seated round the table after dinner, on the day of their walk to the library, John Moseley, awakening from a reverie, exclaimed suddenly,

“Which do you think the handsomest, Emily, Grace Chatterton or Miss Fitzgerald?”

Emily laughed, as she answered, “Grace, certainly; do you not think so, brother?”

“Yes, on the whole; but don’t you think Grace looks like her mother at times?”

“Oh no, she is the image of Chatterton.”