“Agnes in love!  Well, papa, and surely that is not unnatural.”

“Thank you, Jane,” replied Agnes.  “Papa, that’s a rebuff worth something; and Jane,” she proceeded, anxious still to vindicate her own sagacity with respect to her sister, “suppose I should be in love, surely I may carry on an innocent intercourse with my lover, without consulting papa.”

“No, Agnes, you should not,” replied her sister, vehemently; “no intercourse—­no intercourse without papa’s knowledge, can be innocent.  There is deceit and dissimulation in it—­there is treachery in it.  It is impossible to say how gloomily such an intercourse may end.  Only think, my dear Agnes,” she proceeded, in a low, but vehement and condensed voice—­“only think, dear Agnes, what the consequences might be to you if such an attachment, and such a clandestine mode of conducting it, should in consequence of your duplicity to papa, cause the Almighty God to withdraw His grace from you, and that, you should thereby become a cast-away—­a castaway!  I shudder to think of it!  I shudder to think of it.”

“Jane, sit beside me,” said Mr. Sinclair; “you are rather too hard upon poor Agnes—­but, still come, and sit beside me.  You are my own sweet child—­my own dutiful and candid girl.”

“I cannot, I cannot, papa, I dare not,” she exclaimed, and without uttering another word she arose, and rushed out of the room.  In less than a minute, however, she returned again, and approaching him, said—­“Papa, forgive me, I will, I trust, soon be a better girl than I am; bless me and bid me good-night.  Mamma, bless me you too, I am your poor Jane, and I know you all love me more than you ought.  Do not think that I am unhappy—­don’t think it.  I have not been for some time so happy as I am to-night.”

She then passed out of the room, and retired to her own apartment.

When she was gone, Agnes, who sat beside | her father, turned to him, and leaned her I head upon his breast, burst into bitter tears.  “Papa,” she exclaimed, “I believe you will now admit that I have gained the victory.  My sister’s peace of mind or happiness is gone for ever.  Unless Osborne either now is, or becomes in time attached to her, I know not what the consequences may be.”

“It will be well for Osborne, at all events, if he has not practised upon her affections,” said William; “that is, granting that the suspicion, be just.  But the truth is, I don’t think Osborne has any thing to do with her feelings.  It is merely some imaginary trifle that she has got into her foolish little head, poor girl.  Don’t distress yourself, father—­you know she was always over-scrupulous.  Even the most harmless fib that ever was told, is a crime in her eyes.  I wish, for my part, she had a little wholesome wickedness about—­I don’t mean that sir, in a very unfavorable light,” he said in reply to a look of severity from his father, “but I wish she had some leaning to error about her.  She would, in one sense at least, be the better for it.”