“I have not, my dear child, had reason to doubt of the exactness and purity of your faith—no observation which I have been able to make, and I have carefully watched—oh! how vigilant must a widowed mother be over the purity of faith and conduct of her orphan daughter—I have, I repeat to you, found nothing in your faith to reprove, nothing in your religion and stated exercises unworthy of a Christian. But—” “But, mother—but—what can you mean? You talk to me earnestly of my association with, and my affection for Adolph—you allude to my faith and my conduct, and say that you find nothing in my faith to censure, and nothing in my _religious_ exercises unworthy a Christian, but you omit to approve of my _conduct_. You avoid reference to that, unless you were approaching it with the terrible—‘But.’” “I was approaching it—and—” “Does my mother mean that there is aught in my conduct, my conduct with Adolph, because it is evident that the remarks all tend thitherward—does my mother suspect impropriety of conduct in me—mother, mother, for Heaven’s sake, spare me that imputation. For me and my thoughts, my inmost thoughts, your chamber has been as much the seat of the confessional as the place of the altar, and not a feeling of my heart, not an impulse of passion, not a motive or a wish has been withheld from you that would have been uttered in explanation or confession to the priest. I know there is wrong, dear mother, in the world. I am human, with human passions and human weaknesses, but not a thought of impurity has ever been uttered to me by Adolph, or been suggested by our relations with each other. Blessed queen of purity! in this thing I am innocent, in word and thought. Dear mother, let me not suffer—let not Adolph suffer in your estimation upon such a suspicion, he is above such weakness and wickedness, and I should need no further monition from Heaven to avoid his society, than the discovery that his words, nay, that our meeting suggested thoughts unsanctioned by my religion, unworthy of your approval.” Louise paused in her vehement appeal. She had gone to the very verge of propriety in her asseverations, and she saw nothing in her mother’s countenance which indicated any change of sentiment. The girl felt for a moment indignant. The language of her mother implied a charge of the most painful character, and though it might not reach to the extent which, at first, she seemed to suppose, yet she felt that maidenly propriety is scarcely less outraged by an imputation of habitual association with the dangerous and the impure, than by a charge of crime committed—and she started at the bare hint of the wrong, and was stung to the soul when her vehement disclaimer seemed to work no change in the mind of her accusing mother.