A Simple Story

"My Lord, call my observations wrong, when you have reflected upon them as a man, and not as a lover--divest yourself of your passion, and meet me upon equal ground."

"I will meet no one--I will consult no one--my own judgment shall be the judge, and in a few months marry, or--banish me from her for ever."

There was something in these last words, in the tone and firmness with which they were delivered, that the heart of Sandford rested upon with content--they bore the symptoms of a menace that would be executed; and he parted from his patron with congratulations upon his wisdom, and with giving him the warmest assurances of his firm reliance on his word.

Lord Elmwood having come to this resolution, was more composed than he had been for several days before; while the horror of domestic wrangles--a family without subordination--a house without oeconomy--in a word, a wife without discretion, had been perpetually present to his mind.

Mr. Sandford, although he was a man of understanding, of learning, and a complete casuist, yet all the faults he himself committed, were entirely--for want of knowing better. He constantly reproved faults in others, and he was most assuredly too good a man not to have corrected and amended his own, had they been known to him--but they were not. He had been for so long