"'You must wait till to-morrow,' said he. 'There is no accounting for the oddities of some people. Lady Jane told me she could not possibly travel on a Sunday. I wondered where was the impossibility. Sunday, I assured her, was the only day for traveling in comfort, as the road was not obstructed by wagons and carts. She replied, with a gravity which made me laugh, 'That she should be ashamed to think that a person of her rank and education should be indebted, for her being able to trample with more convenience on a divine law, to the piety of the vulgar who durst not violate it.' Did you ever hear any thing so whimsical, Matilda?' I said nothing, but my heart smote me. Never will I repeat this offense. "'On the Monday we set out. I had kept close the preceding day, under pretense of illness. This I also assigned as an excuse in the cards sent to my invited guests, pleading the necessity of going into the country for change of air. Shall I own I dreaded being shut up in a barouche, and still more in the lonely castle, with Lady Jane? I looked for nothing every moment but 'the thorns and briars of reproof.' But I soon found that the woman whom I thought was a Methodist, was a most entertaining companion. Instead of austerity in her looks and reproach in her language, I found nothing but kindness and affection, vivacity and elegance. While she soothed my sorrows, she strengthened my better purposes. Her conversation gradually revived in my mind tastes and principles which had been early sown in it, but which the world seemed completely to have eradicated. "'In the neighborhood of the castle, Lady Jane carried me to visit the abodes of poverty and sickness. I envied her large but discriminating liberality, and the means she had of gratifying it, while I shed tears at the remembrance of my own squandered thousands. I had never been hard-hearted, but I had always given to importunity, rather than to want or merit. I blushed, that while I had been absurdly profuse to cases of which I knew nothing, my own village had been perishing with a contagious sickness. "'While I amused myself with drawing, my aunt often read to me some rationally entertaining book, occasionally introducing religious reading and discourse, with a wisdom and moderation which increased the effect of both. Knowing my natural levity and wretched habits, she generally waited till the proposal came from myself. At first when I suggested it, it was to please her: at length I began to find a degree of pleasure in it myself.