Surprised at the steadiness and warmth with which his young friend persevered in her request, Dunscomb, after obtaining the permission of her mother, and promising to take good care of his charge, was permitted to convey Anna to Biberry, in the manner related. Now, that her wish was about to be gratified, Anna Updyke, like thousands of others who have been more impelled by impulses than governed by reason, shrank from the execution of her own purposes. But the generous ardour revived in her in time to save appearances; and she was admitted by well-meaning Mrs. Gott to the gallery of the prison, leaning on Dunscomb’s arm, much as she might have entered a drawing-room, in a regular morning call. The meeting between these two charming young women was frank and cordial, though slightly qualified by the forms of the world. A watchful and critical observer might have detected less of nature in Mary Monson’s manner than in that of her guest, even while the welcome she gave her visitor was not without cordiality and feeling. It is true that her courtesy was more elaborate and European, if one may use the expression, than it is usual to see in an American female, and her air was less ardent than that of Anna; but the last was highly struck with her countenance and general appearance, and, on the whole, not dissatisfied with her own reception. The power of sympathy and the force of affinities soon made themselves felt, as between these two youthful females. Anna regarded Mary as a stranger most grievously wronged; and forgetting all that there was which was questionable or mysterious in her situation, or remembering it only to feel the influence of its interest, while she submitted to a species of community of feeling with John Wilmeter, as she fancied, and soon got to be as much entranced with the stranger as seemed to be the fate of all who approached the circle of her acquaintance. On the other hand, Mary Monson felt a consolation and gratification in this visit to which she had long been a stranger. Good Mrs. Gott was kind-hearted and a woman, but she had no claim to the refinement and peculiar sensibilities of a lady; while Marie Moulin, discreet, respectful, even wise as she was in her own way, was, after all, nothing but an upper servant. The chasm between the cultivated and the uncultivated, the polished and the unpolished, is wide; and the accused fully appreciated the change, when one of her own class in life, habits, associations, and, if the reader will, prejudices, so unexpectedly appeared to sympathize with, and to console her. Under such circumstances, three or four hours made the two fast and deeply-interested friends, on their own accounts, to say nothing of the effect produced by the generous advances of one, and the perilous condition of the other.