spend a few weeks in Sybil’s old home.  The aunt, with much serpentine wisdom, arranges that she and her niece shall adapt themselves to this very different atmosphere—­eschew cards, attend regularly at chapel, and comply with the tone and habits of the family.  The niece, however, is really as good as she is pretty, and her conscience smites her for deceiving her father, of whom she is genuinely fond.  She stands before him “pure, pensive, simple, sad,”—­yet

                  “the damsel’s heart,
  When Jonas praised, reproved her for the part;
  For Sybil, fond of pleasure, gay and light,
  Had still a secret bias to the right;
  Vain as she was—­and flattery made her vain—­
  Her simulation gave her bosom pain.”

As time wears on, however, this state of things must come to a close.  Jonas is anxious that his daughter shall marry suitably, and he finds among his neighbours an admirable young man, a staunch member of the “persuasion,” and well furnished in this world’s goods.  He calls his daughter home, that she may be at once introduced to her future husband, for the father is as certain as Sir Anthony Absolute himself that daughters should accept what is offered them and ask no questions.  Sybil is by no means unwilling to enter the holy state, if the right man can be found.  Indeed, she is wearying of the aimless life she lives with her worldly aunt, and the gradual change in her thoughts and hopes is indicated in a passage of much delicacy and insight: 

  “Jonas now ask’d his daughter—­and the Aunt,
  Though loth to lose her, was obliged to grant.—­
  But would not Sybil to the matron cling,
  And fear to leave the shelter of her wing? 
  No! in the young there lives a love of change,
  And to the easy they prefer the strange! 
  Then, too, the joys she once pursued with zeal,
  From whist and visits sprung, she ceased to feel: 
  When with, the matrons Sybil first sat down,
  To cut for partners and to stake her crown,
  This to the youthful maid preferment seem’d,
  Who thought what woman she was then esteem’d;
  But in few years, when she perceived indeed
  The real woman to the girl succeed,
  No longer tricks and honours fill’d her mind,
  But other feelings, not so well defined;
  She then reluctant grew, and thought it hard
  To sit and ponder o’er an ugly card;
  Rather the nut-tree shade the nymph preferr’d,
  Pleased with the pensive gloom and evening bird;
  Thither, from company retired, she took
  The silent walk, or read the fav’rite book.”

The interview between Sybil and the young man is conceived with real skill and humour.  The young lady receives her lover, prepared to treat him with gentle mockery and to keep him at a convenient distance.  The young lover is not daunted, and plainly warns her against the consequences of such levity.  But as the little duel proceeds, each gradually detects the real good that underlies the surface qualities of the other.  In spite of his formalism, Sybil discerns that her lover is full of good sense and feeling; and he makes the same discovery with regard to the young lady’s badinage. And then, after a conflict of wits that seems to terminate without any actual result, the anxious father approaches his child with a final appeal to her sense of filial duty: