of Paul.  The motive which no man or woman could make or even modify, was the prime spring as well as ruler of the will, cropping out, to use his own words, from moral, if not also physical causes, laid when God said, “Let there be light, and there was light.”  A deeper thinker than most of her sex, she felt “the sublimity in terror” of this view of God’s ways with man.  If she could not resist the resolution to love Walter, how could he resist the love he bore to another?  The thought shook her to the heart; nor was she less pained when she reflected on the hapless Paul, with his long-concealed affection, so pure from the sordidness of a desire for money, that he would have toiled for her under the flame of the midnight lamp, continued into the light of the rising sun.

During the night the persistency of her resolution to remain by her past affection was maintained; yet as it was still merely a persistency implying the continuance of a foe ready to assert the old rights, she was so far unhappy that she wanted that composure of mind which consists in the absence of conflict among one’s own thoughts.

In the morning she found the locket lying on her parlour table, with the inscription changed from Agnes Ainslie to Rachel Grierson.  She took it up and fixed her eyes upon it.  At one time she would have given the world for it; now it attracted her and repelled her.  It came from the only man she loved; but another name had been on it, which ought, for aught she could be sure of, to have been on it still.  It might be the pledge of affection, but it might also be the evidence of falsehood to her and unfaithfulness to another.  And then, as she traced the lines of her name, she thought she could discover the signs of a tremulousness in the hand that traced them.  Amidst all these thoughts and conflicting feelings, she could not help recurring to the circumstance that he had not presented the locket with his own hands.  She was unwilling to indulge in an unfavourable construction; and perhaps the more so that it so far pleased her as relieving her from the dilemma of accepting it with more coldness than her love warranted, or more warmth than her reason allowed.  Nay, though she gloated over his image when she was alone, she felt an undefined fear of meeting him.  Might he not be precipitated into some further defence or confession, which might fortify suspicions still battling against her prepossessions, and diminish her love?  Nor was this disinclination towards personal interviews confined to this day—­it continued; and it seemed as if he also wished his connection with her to stand in the meantime upon the pledges and confessions already made.  This she could also notice; but as for rendering a true reason for it, she couldn’t, even with the great ability she possessed in construing conduct and character.