Dunscomb did justice to his friend’s character, by relating how the matter really stood; after which he asked permission to introduce Anna Updyke. Mary Monson seemed startled at this request, and asked several questions, which induced her counsel to surmise that she was fearful of being recognised. Nor was Dunscomb pleased with all the expedients adopted by his client, in order to extract information from him. He thought they slightly indicated cunning, a quality that he might be said to abhor. Accustomed as he was to all the efforts of ingenuity in illustrating a principle or maintaining a proposition, he had always avoided everything like sophistry and falsehood. This weakness on the part of Mary Monson, however, was soon forgotten in the graceful manner in which she acquiesced in the wish of the stranger to be admitted. The permission was finally accorded, as if an honour were received, with the tact of a female and the easy dignity of a gentlewoman. Anna Updyke possessed a certain ardour of character that had more than once, given her prudent and sagacious mother uneasiness, and which sometimes led her into the commission of acts, always innocent in themselves, and perfectly under the restraint of principles, which the world would have been apt to regard as imprudent. Such, however, was far from being her reputation, her modesty and the diffidence with which she regarded herself, being amply sufficient to protect her from the common observation, even while most beset by the weakness named. Her love for John Wilmeter was so disinterested, or to herself so seemed to be, that she fancied she could even assist in bringing about his union with another woman, were that necessary to his happiness. She believed that this mysterious stranger was, to say the least, an object of intense interest with John, which soon made her an object of intense interest with herself; and each hour increased her desire to become acquainted with one so situated, friendless, accused, and seemingly suspended by a thread over an abyss, as she was. When she first made her proposal to Dunscomb to be permitted to visit his client, the wary and experienced counsellor strongly objected to the step. It was imprudent, could lead to no good, and might leave an impression unfavourable to Anna’s own character. But this advice was unheeded by a girl of Anna Updyke’s generous temperament. Quiet and gentle as she ordinarily appeared to be, there was a deep under-current of feeling and enthusiasm in her moral constitution, that bore her onward in any course which she considered to be right, with a total abnegation of self. This was a quality to lead to good or evil, as it might receive a direction; and happily nothing had yet occurred in her brief existence to carry her away towards the latter goal.