Wherefore is it, my dear Lucy, that so many are found who, in the pride of reason, appear to forget the feeble tenure on which depends their boasted privileges; their justly prized prerogatives? The pulsation of an artery more or less rapid than suits our fragile frame, may, in a moment suspend, and, for a time, annihilate those faculties that distinguish us from the brute that perishes. Are we not liable to diseases, to accidents, to sorrows, which no human skill can remedy, no human prudence can prevent, and which, in a moment, may reduce us to idiots, or render us as ferocious and dangerous as beasts of prey? Suspend, but for a moment, the agency of that Being in "whom we live and move," and what are we? Surely there needed not the awful interdiction of eternal truth, to teach us, that "Pride was not made for man." Our own weakness, our own feebleness, might have sufficed to point out the lesson! You are fortunately released from a train of thoughts more useful to myself than needful to one who "bears her faculties so meekly." I am summoned to the card-table; Lady Maclairn requested me so earnestly to make up a rubber for _poor Lucretia_, that I cannot refuse her. There are sceptics to be found who deny that there is constancy in love. It would save much cavilling if these ingenious people would use proper terms. No one, I presume, would contradict them in their assertion, that people cannot eat with such an appetite, or drink when not thirsty, as if they were hungry or thirsty; but leaving such to their ignorance, I will start a new subject of argument, for I will maintain that one cannot always _hate_. No, Lucy, irreconcilable hatred, like a raging fever, must either kill the patient or wear itself out. My cheek no longer flushes on seeing Miss Flint; nothing rises in my throat when I ask her how she passed the night. Are not these gracious signs, Lucy, that I am becoming truly your sister? You shake your dear head. Well, "Rome was not built in a day," says the proverb; and after all, can I help that people should reap that which they have sowed? Would you wish me to give to Miss Flint the tribute due to suffering virtue? and to think, with Mrs. Allen, that the wicked are more to be commiserated than the good? If you do you must give me time, and in justice commend these dawnings of virtue; for I have, in consequence of my charity, been two days writing this, instead of one. Love me, Lucy; be sure to love me with all my faults. Nothing you can do for my benefit will so soon correct them. I am impatient to hear what you think of "My lilley of the valley!" There! it is breathed! Take the dear blessing amongst you! and, oh! that I could add: take with it your Rachel Cowley. CHAP. IX.