'Cruel girl!' cried Glenmurray, 'I am not ordered a sleeping draught!' Adeline was however resolved; and, opening the book, she read argument after argument with unyielding perseverance, till Glenmurray, who, like the eagle in the song, saw on the dart that wounded him his own feathers, cried 'Quarter!' 'But tell me, dear Adeline,' said Glenmurray, a little piqued at her too just reproofs, 'you, who are so severe on my want of consistency, are you yourself capable of acting up in every respect to your precepts?' 'After your weakness,' replied Adeline, smiling, 'it becomes me to doubt my own strength; but I assure you that I make it a scruple of conscience, to show by my conduct my confidence in the truth of my opinions.' 'Then, in defiance of the world's opinion, that opinion which I, you see, had not resolution to brave, you will be mine--not according to the ties of marriage, but with no other ties or sanction than those of love and reason?' 'I will,' said Adeline: 'and may He whom I worship' (raising her fine eyes and white arms to heaven) 'desert me when I desert you!' Who that had seen her countenance and gesture at that moment, could have imagined she was calling on heaven to witness an engagement to lead a life of infamy? Rather would they have thought her a sublime enthusiast breathing forth the worship of a grateful soul. It may be supposed that Glenmurray's heart beat with exultation at this confession from Adeline, and that he forgot, in the promised indulgence of his passion, those bounds which strict decorum required. But Glenmurray did her justice; he beheld her as she was--all purity of feeling and all delicacy; and, if possible, the slight favours by which true love is long contented to be fed, though granted by Adeline with more conscious emotion, were received by him with more devoted respect: besides, he again felt that mixture of pain with pleasure, on this assurance of her love, which he had experienced before. For he knew, though Adeline did not, the extent of the degradation into which the step which her conscience approved would necessarily precipitate her; and experience alone could convince him that her sensibility to shame, when she was for the first time exposed to it, would not overcome her supposed fortitude and boasted contempt of the world's opinion, and change all the roses of love into the thorns of regret and remorse.