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"While something in me," he went on, "is acutely sensible to her charms, something else is as deeply impressed with her defects: they are such that she could sympathise in nothing I aspired to-co-operate in nothing I undertook.

Rosamond a sufferer, a labourer, a female apostle? Rosamond a missionary's wife? No!"

"But you need not be a missionary. You might relinquish that scheme."

"Relinquish! What! my vocation? My great work? My foundation laid on earth for a mansion in heaven? My hopes of being numbered in the band who have merged all ambitions in the glorious one of bettering their race-of carrying knowledge into the realms of ignorance-of substituting peace for war-freedom for bondage-religion for superstition-the hope of heaven for the fear of hell? Must I relinquish that? It is dearer than the blood in my veins.

It is what I have to look forward to, and to live for."

After a considerable pause, I said-"And Miss Oliver? Are her disappointment and sorrow of no interest to you?"

"Miss Oliver is ever surrounded by suitors and flatterers: in less than a month, my image will be effaced from her heart. She will forget me; and will marry, probably, some one who will make her far happier than I should do."

"You speak coolly enough; but you suffer in the conflict. You are wasting away."

"No. If I get a little thin, it is with anxiety about my prospects, yet unsettled-my departure, continually procrastinated.

Only this morning, I received intelligence that the successor, whose arrival I have been so long expecting, cannot be ready to replace me for three months to come yet; and perhaps the three months may extend to six."

"You tremble and become flushed whenever Miss Oliver enters the schoolroom."

Again the surprised expression crossed his face.

He had not imagined that a woman would dare to speak so to a man.

For me, I felt at home in this sort of discourse.

I could never rest in communication with strong, discreet, and refined minds, whether male or female, till I had passed the outworks of conventional reserve, and crossed the threshold of confidence, and won a place by their heart's very hearthstone.

"You are original," said he, "and not timid.

There is something brave in your spirit, as well as penetrating in your eye; but allow me to assure you that you partially misinterpret my emotions.

You think them more profound and potent than they are.

You give me a larger allowance of sympathy than I have a just claim to.

When I colour, and when I shade before Miss Oliver, I do not pity myself.

I scorn the weakness.

I know it is ignoble: a mere fever of the flesh: not, I declare, the convulsion of the soul.

That is just as fixed as a rock, firm set in the depths of a restless sea.

Know me to be what I am-a cold hard man."

I smiled incredulously.

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