“Reprobate! Yes. Am not I a reprobate,
and the worst, plotting against innocence? New
England,” he repeated to himself. “How
much the name promises. A new world, a new life,
and old fetters struck off. God, if it could
be done! It would hurt no one—no one—except
perhaps those children, who might suffer a brief sorrow—and
it would make two lives happy that must be blighted
else. Two lives! Am I so sure of her?
Yes, if eyes speak true. Sure as of my own fond
passion. The contagion, quotha! I have suffered
that, sweet, and know its icy sweats and parching heats;
but ’tis not so fierce a fever as that devilish
disease, the longing for your company.”
GOOD-BYE, LONDON.
Sitting in her own room before supper, a letter was
brought to Angela—a long letter, closely
written, in a neat, firm hand she knew very well.
It was from Denzil Warner; a letter full of earnest
thought and warm feeling, in which he pursued the
subject of their morning’s discourse.
“We were interrupted before I had time to open
my heart to you, dearest,” he wrote; “and
at a moment when we had touched on the most delicate
point in our friendship—the difference in
our religious education and observance. Oh, my
beloved, let not difference in particulars divide two
hearts that worship the same God, or make a barrier
between two minds that think alike upon essentials.
The Christ who died for you is not less my Saviour
because I love not to obtrude the dressed-up image
of His earthly mother between His Godhead and my prayers.
In the regeneration of baptism, in the sanctity of
marriage, in the resurrection of the body, and the
life of the world to come, in the reality of sin and
the necessity for repentance, I believe as truly as
any Papist living. Let our lives be but once
united, who knows how the future may shape and modify
our minds and our faith? I may be brought to
your way of thinking, or you to mine. I will
pledge myself never to be guilty of disrespect to your
religion, or to unkindly urge you to any change in
your observances. I am not one of those who have
exchanged one tyranny for another, and who, released
from the dominion of Rome, have become the slave of
the Covenant. I have been taught by one who,
himself deeply religious, would have all men free to
worship God by the light of their own conscience;
and to my wife, that dearer half of my soul, I would
allow perfect freedom. I suffer from the lack
of poetic phrases with which to embellish the plain
reality of my love; but be sure, Angela, that you
may travel far through the world, and receive many
a flowery compliment to your beauty, yet meet none
who will love you as faithfully as I have loved you
for this year last past, and as I doubt I shall love
you—happy or unfortunate in my wooing—for
all the rest of my life. Think, dearest, whether
it were not wise on your part to accept the chaste
