handsome or charming in other respects he might be, for you could not love him, you should hate--despise-- pity--anything but love him--were not those your words?'
`Yes, but--'
`And did you not say that your affection must be founded on approbation; and that unless you could approve and honour and respect, you could not love?'
`Yes, but I do approve and honour and respect--'
`How so, my dear? is Mr Huntingdon a good man?'
`He is a much better man than you think him.'
`That is nothing to the purpose. Is he a good man?'
`Yes--in some respects. He has a good disposition.'
`Is he a man of principle?'
`Perhaps not, exactly; but it is only for want of thought: if he had someone to advise him, and remind him of what is right--'
`He would soon learn, you think--and you yourself would willingly undertake to be his teacher? But, my dear, he is, I believe, full ten years older than you--how is it that you are so beforehand in moral acquirements?'
`Thanks to you, aunt, I have been well brought up, and had good examples always before me, which he, most likely, has not;--and besides, he is of a sanguine temperament, and a gays thought less temper, and I am naturally inclined to reflection.'
`Well, now you have made him out to be deficient in both sense and principle, by your own confession--'
`Then my sense and my principle are at his service!'
`That sounds presumptuous, Helen! Do you think you have enough for both; and do you imagine your merry, thoughtless profligate would allow himself to be guided by a young, girl like you?'
`No; I should not wish to guide him; but I think I might have influence sufficient to save him from some errors, and I should think my life well spent in the effort to preserve so noble a nature from destruction. He always listens attentively now, when I speak seriously to him (and I often venture to reprove his random way of talking), and sometimes he says that if he had me always by his side he should never do or say a wicked thing, and that a little daily talk with me would make him quite a saint. It may be partly jest and partly flattery, but still--'
`But still you think it may be truth?'
`If I do think there is any mixture of truth in it, it is not from confidence in my own powers, but in his natural goodness.--And you have no right to call him a profligate, aunt; he is nothing of the kind.'
`Who told you so, my dear? bat was that story about his intrigue with a married lady--Lady who was it-- Miss Wilmot herself was telling you the other day?'
`It was false--false!' I cried. `I don't believe a word of it.'
`You think, then, that he is a virtuous, well-conducted young man?'